A Fine Line
by theshadoelady
Summary: My 1st Dramione; rejected elsewhere, posting here with quite a bit of vitrol at the end. Coarse lang./lemons/OOC/AU/HBP&DH disregarded for purpose of tale. A fluffy lil romance written for a V-day Challenge. New and improved version. M for a reason Review
1. Chapter 2

_**SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS**_

**A Word of Warning****: This ficlet is set in an Alternate Universe. HBP and DH have both been completely disregarded for the purpose of this story. I'd definitely rate it "M" It contains Coarse Language, Limes, Lemons, and Characters OOC. **

**It also begins with a rather questionable flashback sequence that, **_**trust**_** me, is necessary for the ending to make sense. Using "film canon" there, not "book canon". **_**"Sorry 'bout that!"**_

**I believe that what attracts and keeps fans of various Authors is each Author's own unique and individual style. Any glaring mistakes or unprofessionalism you may encounter herein is entirely my own fault and responsibility, and is strictly against the unheeded advice (and the superior knowledge) of my extremely patient Beta. **

_**SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS**_

_**A/N:**__**I'm **_**not **_**JKR, and I **_**don't **_**own anything you might recognize within this tale. But if I was and if I did, I'd be in the Bahama's lying on the white-sugar sands and sipping on an icy Pina Colada with Alan Rickman beside me right now. It would be an iron-clad part of his Contract! Just kidding, NOT! **__mmwwahhaha! (she evilly chuckles, as she greedily rubs her hands together in her wickedly wanton anticipation!)_

_**SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS**_

_**(**__**Flashback from Third Year**__**)**_

_**Draco (in his snidest, most aristocratic voice): **_"Come to see the show?"

_**Hermione (quickly striding the remaining distance towards him in full-duelling posture, her wand tip pressed firmly against Draco's throat, forcing his chin up, and his fear causing him to snivel): **_"You foul, loathsome, evil, little COCKROACH!"

_**Ron (calling to Hermione from a short distance away, trying to keep her from making a huge mistake):**_"Hermione! Come on. He's not worth it!"

_**(Hermione slowly lowers her wand down, and turns away from Draco Malfoy. She tucks her wand into the back pocket of her jeans as she turns around, willing to walk away for both Ron and Harry's sakes.) **_

_**(Draco begins to snicker too soon, however. Before she'd even thought it through, Hermione whirls quickly back with a perfect right-jab to his perfect patrician nose! She felt the immensely satisfying 'Crunch!' beneath her knuckles of his nose breaking upon the fierce impact.) **_

_**Draco (running away, clutching his profusely bleeding nose with both hands, and Crabbe and Goyle chasing close on his heels): **_"Not a word about this to anyone! I'm going to get that jumped-up filthy Mudblood. You mark my words. Just you wait and see!"

_**SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS**_

**A Fine Line**

**Chapter One: I'll See You In September**

_**SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS**_

_**(Hermione's POV)**_

"All a-Board!!" sang out the conductor of the Hogwarts Express as students, prefects, monitors, along with the odd assortment of teachers and Order members sent to guard those students clamboured from the 9 3/4's platform onto the train for the long ride to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, and the new start of term.

Hermione was a bit sad that she'd not be riding in the same coach with Harry and Ron, just as she had done for the past six years, but was very excited at the same time. Because this year, her shiny Head Girl's badge had arrived neatly tucked into the same envelope with her Hogwarts letter.

This year would be her year, Hermione just knewit. Not that she had ever minded being the brain of the Golden Trio, but by Merlin's Shiny Silver Beard! She'd always been so much more than just books and cleverness, even if her friends could never see it.

She so very desperately wanted to be 'Just Hermione' for once before she graduated Hogwarts, and not be just Harry Potter's best female friend OR just Ron Weasley's 'back up, in case no one better comes along'.

This year she would be riding in the plush, rather luxurious, private coach reserved for the Head's. Hermione mulled over all of her classmates that had been taking the same courses as she had every year, as she tried to work out just who might possibly have made Head Boy this year. She'd really like to know exactly whom she'd be sharing quarters and duties with this year, as well as this coach they were to travel in.

She knew all of her fellow Gryffindors, and none of them could have possibly made Head Boy this year. Maybe it was Anthony Goldstein of Ravenclaw? Or Justin Finch-Fletchley of Hufflepuff, as his marks were up there also? It had been such an awfully long time since there had been a Hufflepuff Head Boy or Girl, after all.

Her mind skidded to a halt, and locked shut, when it came to her Slytherin classmates. There was only one possible candidate from that House that could even be considered in the running for Head Boy.

Hermione adamantly refused to think about him.He had been the very bane of her existence for the last six whole years. No, she'd never allow herself to think about him. It had to be Anthony Goldstein. It just had to be!

Hermione eased herself back onto the lush velvet upholstered seat, then removed her familiar, Crookshanks, from his cat-carrier and curled him protectively into her nervous arms. The comforting chainsaw purring of her familiar snuggling against her was soon drowned out by the jerk-and-chug-a-chug of the train pulling away from the station.

Since her male counterpart hadn't appeared and joined her in their coach after the first half -hour, Hermione finally began to relax. She fluffed up one of the soft brocade pillows provided, toed off her black leather school shoes, and lifted her socked feet up onto the seat. She yawned widely.

Hermione had been too excited to get very much sleep last night, and it was rapidly catching up with her. She stretched out on the plump, well-padded seat, cuddling a still purring Crooks even tighter in against her chest.

Within a matter of moments, between the rocking rhythm of the Hogwarts Express and the rumbling warmth of her Crookshanks snuggling back against her, Hermione Jane Granger was soon quite soundly asleep.

_SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS_

_**(Draco's POV)**_

"All a-Board!" called the conductor of Hogwarts Express in his sing-song lilt. Students were scurrying around everywhere, much like ants from an overturned mound, as the prefects, teachers, and monitors were trying to make certain that none of the students missed their train, and that they all had seats once on board.

Draco Black Malfoy was desperately attempting to disengage his mother's arms from around his neck so that he could board the train. "Mother! Please let me go, for the love of Merlin. Everyone's watching. You're embarrassing me in front of my friends," he whined softly in his teenaged annoyance.

Tall, perfect, pale, and icily beautiful. That was Narcissa Black Malfoy. Draco was really proud of his beloved mother, and he wouldn't have hurt her for anything in the world. Lucius and the Dark Lord both did enough of that to her already. He caught a glimpse of the tears hovering in her pure blue eyes, as she finally released him and turned her anxious face away.

Draco reached out and caught his mother's hand. "Mother, I promise that I'll owl you as soon as I'm settled in tonight before I go to bed. You have my word," he said more gently, as he lifted her be-ringed hand to his lips and gallantly kissed the back of it.

Narcissa silently sighed, and softly said, "Draco, I'm so very proud of you. Always remember that you are just as much a Black as you are a Malfoy. Don't think that you have to follow in your father's footsteps. You're better than that my son. Better than bothof us, really."

Draco sighed heavily, and gently patted his mother's slender hand again before releasing it. "I know that you don't want me to become like **. . . **him, Mother. My godfather has managed to make me see what Lucius truly is over these past six years. I'll do whatever I can to make you proud that I'm your son. I'm just glad Lucius is still in Azkaban. It always worried me to have to leave you alone with him **. . . **and his **. . .** rages_._"

"All a-Board!" the conductor loudly called one last time, pointedly glaring at Draco. "Bye, Mother! I'll owl you, I promise," Draco called back over his shoulder, leaping onto the steps of the train just as it made its first jerk-and-chug-a-chug. The Hogwarts Express pulled away from the station to begin its long annual trip to Hogwarts for the new start of term.

Narcissa Malfoy stood on the platform waving to her only child until the train could no longer been seen or heard. She slowly turned around, wiping away the tears she'd finally let fall, and despairingly beseeched any deity that might be willing to answer a mother's earnest prayer, "Please save my son, my only child. Don't let Lucius and the Dark Lord steal his soul, or take his life. I beg of you. Save my son, no matter what it takes!" Narcissa pulled the hood of her dark sapphire-blue cloak back up over her pale golden hair, and Apparated back to Malfoy Manor.

Draco stopped and spoke to some of his fellow Slytherins before slowly making his way to the Head's private coach. It was good to feel looked up to, even though he didn't trust most of them any further than he could physically lift and throw the train currently causing him to dip and sway with its forward motion. The only exceptions being Blaise Zabini, Pansy Parkinson, and Millicent Bulstrode.

Those three Draco Malfoy trusted with his very life. They all felt exactly the same way as he did about the Dark Lord. The four had made a pact between themselves last year to help each other avoid taking the Dark Mark. They'd all made plans to go 'underground' and flee the Wizarding World, rather than be forced to become Death Eaters themselves upon their graduation at the end of this year.

His godfather and Head of Slytherin House, Severus Snape, had owled Draco the week prior to let him know that he had made Head Boy, and just who had made Head Girl. By carefully 'reading between the lines', so to speak, Draco had gleaned that his godfather wanted him to make an extra effort to be kind to the chit.

Although Merlin only knew why! Probably it was the very short life expectancy the chit had when the coming war really began full force. There had also been that steely wording, now burned into his memory, _'If you feel it necessary to refer to her heritage in any way, kindly remember to word it _Muggleborn _. . . and not that crude epitaph that is not commonly used in polite society.'_

Draco eased the door of their private coach open, and slipped inside to take his seat opposite the Muggleborn Head Girl. The fuzzy mass of ginger fur curled up in the sleeping girl's arms raised its squashed-in face, cracked its fiery orange eyes open the barest slit, and emitted a long deep throaty growl at the intruder.

Draco merely inclined his platinum head in a slight bow of acknowledgement, and spoke in all sincerity to the animal, "Hello. My name is Draco Malfoy, and I mean no harm to either you or your mistress. I'll be sharing Quarters with you both this year. It would be nice if we could all just get along. Yes?"

Crookshanks lazily stretched his front legs out, spreading his toes wide and exposing his razor sharp two-inch long claws for Malfoy's perusal. For good measure he then yawned widely, curling his rough pink tongue out and slowly licking over the vicious two-inch long curving daggers of his canine teeth. Crooks then gave a slight bow of a nod of his fuzzy orange head to the pale young man, before protectively snuggling back down against his sleeping mistress.

Crookshanks was very impressed that this wizard had actually spoken to him. So few wizards ever did that. Crooks could understand spoken English very well, but because he was only half-kneazle he couldn't respond back in words. But Crookshanks remembered everything!

His mistress had wept floods of bitter tears every year they'd been at Hogwarts because of this wizard's cruel words and actions. Crookshanks decided that he'd reserve his judgement for a while. He'd already let the pale young wizard know that he was well-armed, and that he'd defend his mistress tooth and nail, if necessary.

In the meantime, more sleep was called for, so Crooks shut his glowing eyes and slowly drifted back off. He hoped that he'd dream once more about the queer smelling man-rat that had gotten away from him so many years ago.

Draco leaned back to rest his pale blond head against the window corner of the velvet upholstered seat and sat quietly, just watching the witch and her familiar sleep. There were faint dark shadows underneath her eyelashes that made Draco wonder why Granger shouldn't have been sleeping the sleep of the just every night.

Her golden brown curls were fanned out around her face like the halo of a saint, and her full rosy lips were slightly parted, allowing her warm breath to whisper in and out as her chest rose and fell while she peacefully slept on. She looked just like an angel.

Draco was struck dumb, as a thought niggled it's way from the back of his unconscious mind into the forefront of his consciousness. _'How could I have ever thought of her as homely, bushy-haired, and bucktoothed? Sweet Circe! She's beautiful.'_

He regretfully shook his head, and turned to stare out of the window at the rushing scenery scrolling past. Just more of Lucius' brainwashing, he reckoned. Draco had been refusing for years to see this girl for the lovely, intelligent, powerful, young witch she was becoming, simply because of her unfortunate bloodlines.

Severus had seen it from the very first. He had tried for the past six years to explain it to him, but Lucius' rhetorical rantings, and severe beatings, had kept Draco blind to the acceptance that Muggleborns could be equal in every way to Purebloods. He regretfully sighed once more.

Draco silently acknowledged to himself that his own personal realization on the idiocy of blood bigotry just might have come to late for him to be able to make friends with this highly intelligent witch. Draco thought he might like to make friends with Granger now, if she'd let him. They'd both made Head, after all, and it would make their living arrangements so much more pleasant if they could reach some kind of mutual accord.

Draco finally allowed his own quicksilver eyes to slowly drift shut, and he joined the pair across from him in sleeping, lulled by the peaceful rocking rhythm of the locomotive in which they all rode.

The last thought that flitted through Draco's drowsy awareness was, _'How she must HATE me, for all the cruel words I've said, and awful things I've done to her. The Gods all know that I deserve it.' _Draco yawned, and snuggled down against his own brocade pillow.

His mind added a hopeful afterthought, just before Morpheus claimed him,_ 'I wonder if she'll ever let me attempt to make it all up to her one day?'_

_**SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS**_

_**(Hermione's POV)**_

Halloween was almost upon them, and Headmaster Dumbledore had ordered the Head Girl and Boy to organize the Halloween celebration that was to be held in the Great Hall this Friday night.

It was a lot of additional responsibility falling onto her over-achieving shoulders, and Hermione sighed fretfully. _'Wretched, meddling, old man! Like I don't already have enough on my dish, now this.' _She just knew that the brunt of the work-load involved would somehow end up on her already overloaded back.

Hermione paused in mid-step, and thought once again about Malfoy. He had been doing his fair share of patrolling, with only infrequent complaints, and he'd even been being polite to her in his own snarky Malfoy way.

The Ferret also made a decent study partner when it was just the two of them, alone, in their shared common room. Maybe tonight, while they were studying, she'd check to see what views Malfoy had on the festivities they were supposed to come up with.

She'd really like to make this a special celebration, one that every single student present would talk about and remember for years to come, if they all had years to come considering the rapidly approaching War was almost ready to begin.

The massive clockworks began it's tolling and Hermione jumped. She was startled to find that she'd been standing stock-still and daydreaming about Draco Malfoy, of allpeople!

Hermione began running, in a manner definitely not appropriate to her status as Head Girl, down the many twisting steps to the dungeons. She'd rather have house points taken from her for running in the halls than to be late for her Advanced Potions class.

After all, Hermione Granger hoped to be the one selected for the only Potions Master's Apprenticeship that Professor Snape had ever offered in his twenty someodd years of teaching the dangerous but fascinating subject!

Hermione skidded to a halt just as she reached the heavy oak door leading into the Potions Classroom. She smoothed down her school robes, then demurely walked in, and slid into her usual seat beside Harry and Ron just as the clock finished striking the hour.

Moments later Professor Snape entered his classroom. He abruptly slammed the dark heavy door shut behind him with an impressive **Bang! **The Professor then strode to the front of the classroom, his black teaching robes billowing about him as usual.

With a single brisk wave of one long-fingered pale hand, the ingredients list and brewing instructions began to appear on the chalkboard. Professor Snape then began his lecture on Wolfsbane Potion in his deep, languid, baritone, circling the rows of now intrigued students in a manner that reminded Harry and Ron of a large, angry, black vulture.

When the Professor had concluded his lecture, he stood silently glaring at his Seventh Years for several of the longest seconds ever recorded. Nearly every one of the blighters were squirming in their seats before his glittering onyx eyes released them. Snape finally let out a bored, long-suffering sigh.

"I scarcely dare to hope that any of you dunderheads will be able to successfully brew this difficult and complex potion," Snape drawled, "but it will comprise a full quarter of your final grade this term. Therefore," here he pointedly glared at Hermione, "there will be NO talking amongst yourselves. You will treat this potion as an examination. I will have complete silence until such time as your pernicious attempts at brewing are completed, and your sample is clearly labeled and resting upon my desk. Talking amongst yourselves will result in your failure, even if your potion is perfect, as it will be assumed that you were cheating. That is all. You may now begin."

He whirled around in a swish of black woolen robes and took his seat behind his impressive mahogany desk. The dark Potions Master drew out his quill and special ink, and began furiously slashing great swathes of the blood-red ink across the first parchment of the stack of essays before him.

Despite the surfeit of groans, shuffling, and the obvious nervousness of most of her classmates, Hermione's amber eyes glittered with her excitement as she worried her bottom lip between her teeth. Confidently, she stood up and walked straight over to the supply cabinet and began to pull, organize, and prepare her ingredients.

She was almost giddy at the opportunity to brew such a difficult, complex, and necessary potion. In short, a suitably challenged Hermione Jane Granger was in her very own Heaven!

_SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS_

_**(Draco's POV)**_

Draco was not most pleased by any meaning of the word. Damnable old coot! What in the wide world of witch's tits had made Albus Dumbledore think that he, Draco Malfoy, would actually enjoy planning a Halloween celebration for the whole castle?

Damn, damn, double damn it all! He had a full curriculum on his dish that he at leastneeded an Acceptable on, making 'nice' with the sons and daughters of Death Eaters (so as to avoid suspicion), and his Head Boy's duties and responsibilities. There was his Mother's welfare to worry about, and the ever increasing attraction to the Gryffindor 'goddess that just happened to be his room-mate' to fight against.

Not to mention that there was also his godfather's rather heavy-handed instructions in Legilimency and Occulumency to endure, so that he could withstand both Lucius and the Dark Lord during the upcoming dark times.

Now he had to plan a fucking Halloween celebration to top it all off. Fuck, fuck, fuck it all! Albus--Fucking--Dumbledore included!

Draco stomped off down to the dungeons for his Advanced Potions class without bothering to wait on the aforementioned 'goddess'. He'd left her to do the nicities with the old coot by claiming the need to go back by their quarters to retrieve his Potions essay before class began.

It was a lie, of course. The essay was shrunken and in his robe pocket the whole time. Draco had simply wanted to get away from the Headmaster before that sneaky old wizard could take a peek at what always seemed to be foremost in his mind lately. Very naughty thoughts concerning one Hermione Granger, of course!

As he entered the Potions classroom, Draco sneered his trademark Malfoy sneer at Harry and Ron as he stalked past their table on his left, and went to take his seat down near the front of the classroom beside Blaise and Pansy.

Merlin's Hoary Balls! He was so glad that neither Crabbe nor Goyle had had the smarts to make it into Advanced Potions. Now if he could only manage to get rid of Nott, Draco Malfoy could really enjoy this class, even with Potty and the Weasel sitting at the same table as Hermione.

_'Hermione . . . what a beautiful name!' _Draco thought to himself for about the fifteenth time that day. He softly sighed once more, his eyes glazing over dreamily, as the object of his secret thoughts entered the room to take her accustomed seat.

She hadn't even acknowledged that he was on the same planet, much less sitting only three rows ahead of her on her right. Draco sighed again, and felt Pansy's comforting pat on his knee.

He quirked a lopsided grin at her, and pulled himself together just as Professor Snape slammed the door behind him and strode to the front of the classroom to begin the day's lesson plan.

Draco was amazed that they'd really be working on such an interesting, necessary, and complex potion today. _Circe! _Wolfsbane Potion! Severus must be about to 'weed out' the last of the fools in the Seventh Years Advanced Potions class.

Dumbledore couldn't possibly fault his godfather for expelling any slackers from this class if they were stupid enough to try to chat up their partners. Severus had plainly said they were to consider this potion as an examination, and not to talk.

After he'd set up his cauldron, Draco stood up and made his way over to the supplies cabinet. As he was returning with his ingredients, he dared a furtive glance at Potter's table. He was hard put to surpress the grin that attempted to arch across his full lips when he saw the sheer joy and excitement plainly displayed on Granger's glowing face.

Draco needn't have bothered trying to hide it. She was in her own little academic paradise, and didn't even notice him. When his gaze slid over to where Nott sat across the aisle from Granger, he instantly noticed Nott staring at the expanse of slender tawny thigh and curve of buttocks that were revealed whenever she bent over to make the additions to her already simmering cauldron.

His silver-grey eyes narrowed to angry molten slits as he realized that one of Nott's hands was not occupied with his potion. It was busily massaging his groin underneath his table.

Draco was instantly inflamed with the desire to cast an Unforgivable on Nott! He ground his perfect pearly teeth in his frustration, as he continued to make his way back to his own table.

Draco proceeded to set out his ingredients. He began to organize and prepare them as needed to begin his potion.

This should have been a most interesting and challenging lesson. He set the flame under his cauldron and started his brewing, but his joy about learning this complex potion today was suddenly gone with the wind.

In short, a worried, confused, and unexpectedly jealous, Draco Black Malfoy shook his pale blond head as he slowly realized that he was in his own personal Hell!

**End of Chapter One**

_**SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS**_

_**A/A/N: Well?! How is it so far, dear readers? TRUST me! I know what I'm doing. Just hang on. It's going to be a bumpy ride! (:D)**_

_**SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS**___


	2. Chapter 3

_**SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS**_

**A/N: Once Again; **_**I'm **_**not**_** JKR, and I **_**don't**_** own JK's Potterverse or any of her amazing characters. I just take them out and **_**"play"**_** with them occasionally! **__mmwahhaha! but oh, dear gods! Oh how I'd love to "play" with Severus in real life! she shudders in ecstasy from simply thinking wanton thoughts about it . . . _

_**SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS**_

**Chapter Two: Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow**

_**SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS**_

**(Hermione's POV)**

The snow was gently falling. Soon the Christmas season, and their annual school break, would be upon them.

Hermione loved snow, just as she loved Christmas and all that heralded it: the colourful shops of Hogsmead all decorated and glowing brightly; the many different carollers singing holiday songs on the snowy village streets; the delicious smells of cinnamon, vanilla, peppermint, and cooked sugar wafting out from Honeyduke's; and there was always the pleasurable searching for just the right present for each of her friends.

But today her mood was brightly high for one reason and one reason only. Hermione Granger was almost trembling with excitement as she thought about her escort for this day's trip into Hogsmead.

She snuggled her red thick woolen cloak about her more tightly, and stamped the snowy crust from her booted chilly feet again. Her warm breath was coming out in white, foggy, little puffs into the thick snowy air as the tall, blond, and handsome Head Boy hurried down the frozen steps to meet up with her.

_'It's not a date, it's not a date, it's not a __**date,'**_ she repeatedly chanted the mantra in her head. _'He's just a friend.' _

This time last year if anyone would have told Hermione Granger that she would ever call Draco Malfoy her friend, why she would have simply laughed directly in their idiot faces, if not have hexed them straight to Perdition!

She shook her head at that ironic thought, her golden brown curls bouncing, and laughed out loud at herself.

"What's so funny, Granger?" asked the young aristocrat with a supercilious sniff. "Do I amuse you? Do I have a bogey dangling, or anything equally disgusting?"

"No! Of course not, Malfoy!" Hermione exclaimed, flaming with sudden embarrassment. "Well, yes. You do amuse me, but then you try to amuse me when there's no one around to see." She peeked up at him from underneath her thick black eyelashes, trying to hide her embarrassment.

Draco stuck his tongue out at her, and blew a "Ppffftt!" at that. She laughed again as he rolled his grey eyes leeringly and waggled his blond eyebrows at her. He was grinning widely as he suddenly and idiotically crossed those very same quicksilver eyes at her.

Hermione exploded into another tinkly fit of the giggles. _Circe!_ She was _so_ attracted to the tall handsome Slytherin. She hadn't actually learned all that much from her brief experience with Viktor, the only male she'd ever really dated.

Viktor had chased her. Draco wasn't chasing her. To Hermione, that meant that he simply didn't see her 'that way', and so she used her only other reference points in how to handle male friends.

Hermione had always acted the tomboy when spending time with Harry and Ron all throughout their long friendship. That was safe footing, and a sure way to keep herself from secretly seeing Malfoy as her date. How humiliating would it be for her, if the pompous Slytherin ever found out that she, a filthy Mudblood, secretly fantasized about him as date material?

Hermione couldn't even begin to wrap her mind around that degree of discomfiture she'd certainly experience. So what to do, what to do? She'd treat him just like she'd have treated her other two male best friends, of course.

Hermione gave Malfoy a playful little shove, that quite accidentally landed the blond boy flat on his perfect arse. She then took off running, laughing and calling back over her shoulder to him, "Race you!"

"Why you little minx!" Malfoy angrily exclaimed as he pushed himself up with difficulty. He took off at top speed, hot on her fleeing snowbooted heels.

It wasn't really a fair race. He'd soon overtake her. Hermione precariously slid to a halt on the slick ground, scooped up a large handful of snow, compressed it quickly into a ball, and hurled it hard in Draco's direction.

Her roughly aimed snowball caught him square in his too handsome face, and Hermione exploded into a new fit of giggles at Malfoy's indignant, snowcovered, expression.

He scooped up a huge handful of snow, balled it, and mashed it directly into her giggling mouth. She shoved him backwards. He lost his footing, grabbed hold of her cloak, and they both ended up rolling all the way down the hillside.

The unlikely pair finally found themselves at the bottom of the hill, flat on their backs and short of breath, in a tangle of laughing, wheezing, snow-crusted limbs.

Malfoy recovered first, and clamboured up onto his feet. He reached out for the mittened hand she was frantically waving at him and grabbed it, hauling her up onto her feet also. They both brushed themselves off, and performed a crazy bowing ritual to each other.

Hermione and Draco linked arms and seemed completely at ease with each other's company. Their laughter and pleasant conversation floated up in little sound bytes, drifting behind them up into the thick snowy air, as they companionably strolled down the path towards the brightly lit village of Hogsmead.

_SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS_

Ron looked at Harry. Harry looked at Ron. They were both well hidden under Harry's invisibility cloak as they stood on the frozen verge of the path leading into Hogsmead, in order to spy unseen on Hermione and the Ferret.

They had both almost shit kittens when Hermione had attempted to explain to them just how differently Malfoy was acting this year, while his father was still securely locked away in Azkaban Prison.

They simply hadn't believed her. They had both thought that Malfoy had bamboozled her, or 'Imperio'd her somehow, in some kind of warped, twisted, and deviously nefarious plot to get at Harry.

"Bloody Hell, Harry!" Ron finally whispered. He'd been simply gobsmacked by this reversal of fortune.

"Yeah! I guess we both owe Luna ten galleons after all," Harry slowly said, pushing his glasses back up into place once more. He ruefully shook his unruly dark head, his shocked disbelief slowly giving over to reluctant acceptance.

"Yeah, I reckon you're right," Ron sulkily replied with a shrug of his broad shoulders and an irritated scuff of the toe of his worn hand-me-down boots against a tree root that was semi-buried in the snow. "Ahh, Harry?"

"Yes, Ron?" "Can you lend me ten galleons?" "Yeah, sure. Happy Christmas, Ron." "Yeah! Happy fucking Christmas, Harry."

_SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS_

**(Draco's POV)**

The snow was gently falling. Soon the Christmas season, and their annual school break, would be upon them.

Draco loved snow. He'd always looked forward to playing in the snow every year: winning the snowball fights against his friends; building snowmen armies, complete with snow fortresses, and magically animating them into waging fierce snow battles; and (although he'd never admit to it now, at the ripe old age of eighteen) the making of snow-angels with his Mother in the back gardens of Malfoy Manor.

Now it's soft, pure, chilly innocence reminded him of 'Just Hermione'.

Draco snorted. _'Gods! The chit is turning me into a bloody Hufflepuff.'_ He disgustedly shook his platinum head at the depressingly maudelin thought.

But Draco Malfoy was still secretly thrilled at the prospect of escorting Hermione Granger into Hogsmead today.

He'd thought that Potty and the Weasel would pop a vessel, or somesuch, when he'd asked her out in front of them as they'd all left the library yesterday. They'd been researching various ancient texts together for their upcoming Advanced Transfiguration essays.

In a show of bravado, and ownership, the Weasel had tried to steal a kiss from Hermione in front of him and Potty in the Restricted Section. She'd gently blown the redhead off with a twist of her face so that his kiss landed on her cheek instead. Then she'd gently smiled, and made that soft comment (the one that no guy ever wants to hear) about "loving him like a brother, not a boyfriend".

Draco couldn't figure out just exactly what had caused the sudden lightness around his heart at their exchange, especially when Hermione had then so bossily shoved her books into his arms for him to carry.

They had been arguing over which volumes to reshelve and which to carry over to Madam Pince's desk for checking out. Hermione had finally settled it with the winning salient point, "Because I said so, that's why."

The next instant he'd asked her out! That's when all hell had broken loose around them as soon as they'd quit the library and stepped out into the corridor.

She'd fervently stressed to the Gruesome Twosome that Malfoy was simply her friend, as well as her fellow Head, when the Weasel had first furiously blown up.

Ron was shouting some rather nasty accusations at them; such as his angrily (and with increasing volume) wondering aloud about what went on in the Head's rooms after lights out. He had simply shaken Harry's attempt at a restraining hand off his shoulder, and continued on with his diatribe.

Weaselby had then accused Hermione of having made a 'date' in front of him, immediately after she'd shot him down, simply to humiliate him. She had attempted soothing her irate redhaired friend by repeating once more that it wasn't a 'date', that Malfoy was just her friend too. That there was nothing romantic at all between them. Nothing 'involved'.

So of course his Malfoy pride had raced to the forefront, and Draco had immediately taken Hermione's side. He drew himself up, back stiffly erect, to his full height and struck his most arrogant Malfoy pose. With one blond eyebrow arched imperiously up in apparent disbelief, Draco had vehemently agreed with Hermione that it couldn't possibly be a 'date', when they were only 'mates'.

But oh, _Sweet Circe!_ What a lie he'd told! The Weasel'd had the right of it alright. Of course Draco had meant for it to be a **date.**

The only 'mate' Draco Malfoy even remotely considered Hermione Granger in connection with anymore was within his hot wet dreams of her naked and writhing, and mating with him between his Slytherin-green silk sheets.

Draco buttoned up the last two buttons on his expensively tailored, dark green, cashmere coat, pulled on his matching Moroccan leather gloves, and then hurried down the icy steps to where Hermione stood waiting for him.

_Gods!_ She was just so beautiful. So especially unique! She was 'Just Hermione' all the time to Draco Malfoy now.

Her warm breath was making white, foggy, little puffs in the thick snowy air, the very tip of her adorable little nose already reddening from the cold, and the dark crimson of her woolen cloak making her absolutely the perfect wintery Gryffindor goddess. Then she started laughing.

_'She can't possibly be laughing at ME?' _he irritatedly thought to himself, as all of his old Slytherin prejudices once more reared their ugly venomous heads, and loudly hissed their bitter poisonous protests at him.

_'No, not her! She's just __**. . . happy?' **_Draco argued within himself, as he once more tried to work it all out in his head. He bit back the stinging retort that had rushed up to hover for a few hateful seconds on the tip of his tongue, and swallowed it back down with a bit of difficulty.

Draco abruptly decided to go on the premise that Hermione was simply being her normal Gryffindor self, and so he responded accordingly.

Instead of sneering out that cutting remark, like he'd normally have done in the past, Draco bluntly asked, "What's so funny, Granger?" He sniffed before continuing, "Do I amuse you? Do I have a bogey dangling, or anything equally disgusting?"

Hermione exclaimed, "No! Of course not, Malfoy!" She blushed adorably, turning almost as crimson as her cloak. Her typical Gryffindor honesty, and obvious growing desire for Draco's approval, made her elaborate further, "Well, yes. You doamuse me, but then you try to amuse me when no one's around to see."

Hermione bashfully gazed up at him from underneath her thick black eyelashes, innocently unaware of the naturally sensuous pose she presented to the more experienced Slytherin. She fidgeted with adjusting her hood, as she nervously attempted to hide her embarrassment and failed miserably.

Draco didn't want her treading on needles for this, their very first date, even if Hermione was unaware that that was what this was. Draco wanted to lighten her mood back up, and have her maybe begin to see him as possible date material.

Following blind instinct, and without pausing to first think it through, Draco blew a raspberry at her, _"Ppffftt!". _He then rolled his quicksilver eyes leeringly at her, only to stop and cross them together as he grinned widely, just like an idiot Hufflepuff would've done.

Amazingly, it worked! Hermione's relaxed merry laughter rang out again, trilling like silvery Christmas bells up into the thick snowy air, to Draco's delighted ear.

Then she shoved him, and Draco's perfect arse stung as it sharply impacted the icy stones of the steps. Suddenly she was off and running, calling back to him over her shoulder, "Race you!" Hermione was laughing uproariously as she ran away from him.

"Why, you little minx!" Draco exclaimed, torn between whether to be pissed at her or to laugh with her. As he pushed himself up, skittering and sliding across the slippery surface, Draco's sense of humor kicked in.

Laughter and the season won out. He swiftly took off after her, and was rapidly gaining on that most appealing little witch, when Hermione suddenly skidded to a stop a few meters ahead and reached down.

Before a completely surprised Draco could slow down, or even begin to process what she was doing, a fat snowball suddenly exploded in his face. It instantly filled his nostrils, mouth, even his eyes and eyelashes, and took his breath away with it's stinging, fluffy, coldness!

He smeared the clinging snow from his face with one hand, as his other hand reached down and quickly scooped up his own large snowball. One more of his long strides forward had it mashed squarely in the giggling girl's face.

Hermione shoved him backwards as soon as he'd retaliated, and Draco felt his footing slip. He grabbed at her cloak in a vain attempt to remain upright. That only made matters worse for the pair of them.

Down they both went, wrapped tightly around each other, rolling and tumbling all the way down the hillside. They finally came to a stop with their arms and legs all entangled and snowcrusted flat on their backs at the bottom of the hill.

They both lay there for several long minutes, recovering their composure, just breathlessly wheezing and softly laughing together.

Draco Malfoy thought his heart would surely burst from happiness!

_'Sweet Circe! She's absolutely perfect,' _he thought, as he finally managed to regain both his breath and footing.

Hermione was waving her mittened hand frantically at him, just as she had always waved it in all of the classrooms they'd shared over the years. Draco smiled to himself at those memories as he grabbed hold of her hand and hauled her up onto her feet.

They each brushed themselves off, and then with a deep courtly bow Draco gallantly offered his arm to her. Hermione giggled again, then curtsied deeply to him in return. She gracefully took his proffered arm, just as if he were leading her out onto a dancefloor for a waltz.

The oddly comfortable odd-couple then started walking down the path that led towards Hogsmead, arm in arm, laughing and conversing most companionably as they went along.

**End of Chapter Two**

_**SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS**_

**A/A/N****:**_** I've shown a brief scene from our pair's annual Hogwarts' milestones--the trip back for start of term, Halloween's approach, a single class taken together, and a snowy winter's daytrip into Hogsmead--to allow you to see the same scene from both vantage points. What's coming up next for H & D, you ask? Why Christmas, of course! (:D)**_

_**SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS**_


	3. Chapter 4

_**SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS**_

**A/N: Still not JKR. Sorry. If I **_**was**_**, Severus Snape would be alive and well, still billowing about and striding around to his heart's content down in his beloved dungeons, and (hopefully) shagging some much needed commonsense into one Miss Hermione Jane Granger. Ronald Weasley, **_**really! **_**What **_**was**_** the lady thinking? **_she sadly sighs her much aggrieved sigh of unrequited love for the world's most famous Potions Master . . . _

_**SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS**_

**Chapter Three: I'll Have a Blue Christmas Without You**

_**SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS**_

**(Hermione's POV)**

Hermione had really been missing Draco over the Christmas holiday break. He'd gone home to spend his break with his Mum, and she was spending her Christmas break all alone in a nearly empty castle, revising for her upcoming NEWT's. Again.

Hermione had never fully realized how much warmth, or unexpectedly comfortable companionship, that Draco brought into their chilly shared quarters. She kept listening for the snarky, intelligent, retorts that had always designated his opinions when she expounded on her theories during their nightly study sessions.

On this day nothing met her straining ears except for the uneven snap and crackle of the fire that was cheerily burning in their common room hearth.

It was when she'd attempted to dip her quill where Draco's inkpot normally sat . . . and it wasn't there . . . that Hermione Jane Granger experienced an epiphany concerning what she'd been in self-denial about for months now.

She, the Gryffindor Goodie Two-shoes, the Know-It-All Queen, the best female friend of the Boy Who Lived, was slowly falling hard for the Pureblood Prince of Slytherin House, a suspected Death Eater in training, and the very bane of her existence for six long years, one Draco Black Malfoy.

Hermione was absolutely terrified to even whisper her thoughts aloud, but that didn't prevent her mind from crazily racing around with them anyway. _'Merlin's silvery beard! Of everyone possible, I simply can't be falling for Draco Malfoy! What would Harry and Ron and Ginny all think of me? What would they say about it? What should __**I **__think about it? Bloody Hell! What would DRACO think? What would he say, if __**he**__ knew?' _

Hermione dwelt on that last horrified thought of hers for several long minutes, her brilliant mind shell-shocked into blankness by that traumatic idea. She despondently stared into the leaping orange flames and nervously gnawed at her poor already overly worried-on bottom lip.

Hermione finally sighed deeply, and it seemed to come from the depths of her very soul. The Christmas gift he'd left for her beneath the small 'Charlie Brown' tree that she'd persuaded (nagged) him to help her to cut, lug up all the staircases, and decorate for their quarters, seemed to mock her whenever she let her eyes drift over to it.

Her gift to him rested lovingly beside it. Her present was encased in Gryffindor-red paper with fluffy golden bows, and his gift was all wrapped up in Slytherin-green paper with long curling silver ribbons.

They had both agreed to wait to open them together upon Draco's return, along with sharing a private, although belated, Christmas supper. Hermione gave another deep despondent sigh, and then mirthlessly laughed at her own folly.

It wasn't funny, after all, this angsty turmoil of hormones, uncertainty, and loneliness that she was feeling.

_'Maybe I __**should**__ have taken Ron and Ginny up on their invitation to spend the holiday with them at the Burrow! Sure, it would've been a bit awkward . . . especially since I turned Ron down, but at least I wouldn't have been all by myself during the holidays,' _brooded Hermione.

She was also wishing that her parents hadn't flown out to visit her aunt, uncle, and cousins in Australia this holiday season. Maybe she should have went along on the trip, too, even if it had meant that she'd have been a bit late getting back for the start of semester. Her grades could have easily withstood missing the first week or so of any of her classes.

Hermione finally decided that studying ahead no longer held any interest for her this night. She packed away her textbooks, quill, empty inkwell, and the myriad scraps of parchment containing her various notes into her everpresent knapsack.

Pushing Crookshanks from her lap, she stretched a particularly tense kink out from between her shoulder blades. Sometimes silence could be simply deafening.

Her eyes slid over to their scraggly, forlorn, little Christmas tree once more, and she sadly smiled. Crooks swished in-between her legs, rubbing whatever comfort he could against Hermione, and mewled a commiserating "meow" at his lonely mistress.

Hermione gave a slightly watery chuckle as she bent down and stroked her familiar's head. The one male she could always count on to be there for her, Crookshanks, loved this witch with all of his furry heart. He hated to see his mistress so miserable, and so he took it upon himself to attempt to take her mind off the Pale One

_"Hungry!"_ Crookshanks focused all of his considerable mind-power on that single word.

Hermione looked deeply into her pet's intelligent orange eyes and asked him, "Are you hungry Crooks?" If cats could be said to smile, then Crookshanks would have been positively ear-to-ear as he rubbed even more fervently against his absolutely brilliant mistress, and loudly meowed his agreement.

Hermione weakly laughed, snivelled, and blotted her eyes on the hem of her jumper. Then she addressed her familiar, "Me, too, my handsome man. Let's go downstairs and raid the kitchens, shall we?"

She left the too empty, too silent, room behind her, and headed downstairs to the kitchens with Crookshanks following tightly on her heels.

Hermione decided that she really could go for a cuppa and some sweet biscuits. Maybe some of that yummy custard tart, too, if any was left. She was just hungry. That was all it was.

Yes, that simply had to be all there was to this.

Hunger was making her stupid, and for a witch of Hermione's intelligence, that thought alone should have spoken volumes. However Hermione had decided that she wasn't listening to her stupid heart anymore tonight.

There were still three more long lonely days and nights to get through before Draco returned from his holiday break. Time enough to listen to her idiotic heart then.

Hermione gave a brisk nod of greeting to the Fat Lady when she passed by her portrait. As her tummy suddenly rumbled, she thought that maybe a leg or two of cold fried chicken might be just the very thing to off-set the sticky richness of that custard.

As the darkened staircase shifted yet again, Hermione Granger finally gave herself permission to whisper her most forbidden secret aloud to her familiar in the empty void engulfing them.

"Sweet Circe! How I miss him!"

_SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS_

**(Draco's POV)**

It had been a typical Malfoy Christmas. The tree was truly a vision of expensive perfection, as always.

Snow fell from about three meters above the tiptop of the tall, conical, sweet-smelling, evergreen, charmed to stop just before it touched any of the multitude of various sized, shaped, and colorfully wrapped presents that were stacked beneath it.

Tiny real candles set in tiny silver monogramed holders burned on almost every branch, protectively warded to never catch the tree ablaze.

The hand-blown glass ornaments filling the tree were mostly expensive antique heirlooms, passed down for a hundred or more years, that Narcissa Malfoy had faithfully added to every year of Draco's childhood.

Ivy, holly, mistletoe, and evergreen boughs lit with faerie lights, and tied up by silver silk ribbons, draped all the mantles.

They also dripped in deep generous swags from the bannisters of the impressive main staircase, bringing their welcoming fresh woodsy-smell into the normally sterile formality of the mansion.

Best of all, this year Lucius Malfoy wouldn't be present to belittle, demean, or beat his wife and son for any real or supposed family-rule infractions.

No. This year Lucius Malfoy would be spending his holiday still securely locked away in Azkaban Prison.

Draco and Narcissa Malfoy could finally have a truly Merry Christmas together for once in their rich but miserable lives.

Narcissa could tell that something was 'different' about Draco since he'd been back from school this year. She had immediately sensed it in her son's relaxed, more open, manner.

She saw it in the way that he would dreamily stare off into space while they were conversing during their meals together.

In general, her mother's instinct told Narcissa that there was just 'something good' nowin his very being. To say that she was pleased with this new developement in her son's personality would have been a vast understatement.

Narcissa was absolutely over-joyed! In her happiness, she could have shouted from the very rooftop of Malfoy Manor, "My son is saved!"

Narcissa Black Malfoy was overcome in her gratitude to whomever had wrought this amazing change in her beloved only son. She vowed that she would gladly welcome that person into their lives with her arms, and her heart, wide open. Narcissa simply didn't know how to explain this to her son, and Draco was playing his cards too close to his vest for her to simply blurt it out.

Living in constant fear of Lucius, the mother and son had had to keep their private selves just that_ . . . _private_ . . . _even from each other. They'd both hidden their thoughts and emotions for such a very long time now that it was extremely difficult for either of them to just be open with the other.

Narcissa hoped that they both would be able to overcome that one day. For now she'd just have to communicate with her son through his godfather, just as she had always done.

Narcissa rested all of her faith and hopes on Severus Snape. He was the wizard that a young and innocent Narcissa Black had wanted to marry **. . . **the one that she'd unexpectedly fallen in love with during their own Seventh Year, just after Lily Evans had accepted James Potter's ring.

He was also the one that her father had said had no money or position or prospects when he'd tentatively attempted to court her. Severus had been most rudely turned away by her father for those very reasons.

If only Lucius Malfoy hadn't offered for her hand before Severus had received his Potions Master's degree and began making such tidy sums of money on his Potions patents! With that change in his circumstances, her father might have relented and she quite possibly could have been married to Severus instead.

He was still the only wizard Narcissa had ever truly loved, even though she'd obediently performed her wifely duties for Lucius Malfoy to the letter. Her marriage bed had remained empty since Draco's birth, and Lucius had found his pleasures elsewhere.

He had claimed that she was sexually frigid and emotionally stunted, and had ridiculed her with the nickname "The Ice Princess".

Narcissa was glad of it! Her husband was truly gorgeous to behold, but underneath **. . . **.

She shuddered, unable to finish the thought for remembering the viciousness of his taking of her bruised and ripped body over and over. There were no tender kisses, no gentle caresses, just him 'studding' her and spilling gobs of his seed into her time and again until she'd finally conceived an heir for him.

There had been no love or tenderness at all involved in Draco's conception, only marital rape, but Narcissa's code of honor would never allow her son to know this. He was the sole bright light of her existence, and it didn't matter to his mother how he'd gotten here. She loved him.

Severus Snape also had a code of honor of his very own. He had never even attempted to seduce Narcissa Black since her marriage to his distant maternal cousin, Lucius Malfoy. All he'd given to her since her marriage was his own personal form of chivalric pure love and friendship.

His secret hidden love for Narcissa also caused Severus to love her son almost as much as if he'd fathered Draco himself. For all these reasons, and many more besides, Narcissa trusted in Severus Snape like in no other wizard on earth. He'd surely be able to sort it all out.

Humming _'We Wish You A Merry Christmas'_ under her breath, Narcissa went upstairs to bathe and dress for their annual Christmas dinner and left Draco downstairs to greet and receive his godfather.

She planned on making a grand entrance in her brand new, very clingy, and very decolletee, holiday robes.

Narcissa fully planned on attempting to seduce Severus once again later tonight, after Draco retired. It was Christmas Eve after all, and a girl could always hope!

Draco sat on the emerald green satin-brocade sofa, wondering just how to broach the subject of his feelings for Hermione to his mother. He was waiting for his godfather in the highly decorated formal lounge on his mother's orders.

Severus had been invited, as usual, for their annual Christmas supper and gift exchange. How often Draco had wished over the years that his godfather had been his true father. Their lives would've been so very different. Poorer, but loving, of that fact Draco was certain.

Draco was absolutely positive of one more fact. After living so closely with the Gryffindor goddess for nearly half a year, he knew that old Lucius had been dead wrong. Blood purity, power, and money weren't the end-all and be-all in this life. You couldn't purchase **happiness!**

Draco finally decided to discuss his feelings (and his fears) with Severus once he arrived, while his mother finished her toillette. If their conversation went the way he hoped, why he'd even retire early.

Draco wasn't stupid. He had perfect vision, and he could see that his mother was interested in Severus 'that way'.

Draco didn't know if it was mutual or not, but he could still hope. Maybe his mother would then finally screw up her courage and divorce Lucius, if Severus would ever present her with a palatable option.

What Draco couldn't understand was what was taking them so long to get together. If they needed his approval, well then he'd also take care of that when he talked to Severus. He restlessly fidgeted around for a moment, nervously crossing and uncrossing his long legs.

He didn't want to even think about two old people 'that way', even if he did love both of them with all of his arrogantly selfish Slytherin heart. It was simply too 'squicky'!

Draco had a lot of experience with sex, and understood its pleasures well. But he had next to no experience at all with love.

At first Draco had laid **it,** his attraction to and feelings for Hermione, down to his simply having a serious case of the hots for her brilliant mind and curvaceous little body.

Now Draco Black Malfoy was absolutely positive that he was well and truly in love with one Hermione Jane Granger.

This same time last year if anyone would have told the handsome Pureblood that he'd be pining after the Mudblood Know-It-All Queen of Gryffindor, why Draco would have hexed them straight to Perdition; laughing in their idiot faces as he did it.

Draco Malfoy wasn't laughing now. It wasn't funny. This had to be Love. It simply had to be!

Nothing else would, or could, satisfactorily explain these, these **. . . **feelings _. . . _that he had for the singularly beautiful Muggleborn. The orange flames of the fire popped and crackled merrily in the massive, green-veined, black marble fireplace amply warming the huge formal lounge.

Draco's fingers still felt cold because of his anxiety. Just because he wanted Hermione, it didn't automatically mean that she would ever want him.

Draco had treated her horribly over the years, and he now spent a considerable amount of his time mentally flagellating himself for every word, every deed; for simply any-and-everything that he'd ever done or thought wrong against Hermione Granger.

It was such a mess. He was such a mess. He despondently sighed yet again.

Draco sightlessly stared into the leaping yellow and orange flames. He stood up and paced over to the ornate leaded window to look out once more for his godfather. Draco then turned and paced back to resume his seat, unconsciously crossing and uncrossing his long muscular legs yet again.

There simply wasn't a position that brought him any comfort or ease this night. He rested his chin on his chest, and stared inwardly once more.

Draco's unsettled thoughts finally broke free from their bondage of worry, and took flight across the vast distance. His mind travelled all the way back to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, only to forlornly linger once more on the brightest witch of her age.

He wondered just where Hermione was at this particular moment of time, and just what she was doing right now.

Draco slowly closed his damp mercurial eyes, and swallowed down an unexpectedly thick lump of loneliness that had somehow mysteriously managed to lodge in his throat.

_Sweet Circe! _How he missed her!

**End of Chapter Three**

_**SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS**_

**A/A/N: **_**These first 3 ch's were written in alternating viewpoints, but to 'move it right on along', the following chapters will be written in a chronological countdown. I've tried to contain all of the smuttiness of my tale in one chapter only. It's brief, but quality (I think), and it's coming up next. **__she snickers very Snape-ishly! mwahhaha!_

_**SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS**_


	4. Chapter 5

_**SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS**_

**A/N:**_** I'm **_**not**_** JKR, and I own nothing except the clothes on my back. Therefore you can **_**try**_** to sue me if you want to, but used clothing will be **__**all**__** that you'll be able to get out of **_**me!**_mmwwaahaha! more seriously, i luv 'ya, JK! Please don't sue me!_

**Beware**_**! There be Limes and Lemons ahead in this chappie, 'Shipper-Maties. **_**(For obvious reasons, our couple are both currently 18--legal!) **_snickers__**(:D)!**_

_**SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS**_

**A Fine Line**

**Chapter Four: Sweet Dreams Are Made Of These**

_**SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS**_

_**2nd of February**__**:**_

Hermione was relaxing in a nice deep steamy hot bubblebath. Her buttered-toffee eyes were closed, the mass of her damp dark-honey curls were tightly twisted and held up in place by using her wand as a hairclip. Her head was resting comfortably back against a vinyl inflatible muggle bathpillow.

Hermione was dreamily lost, soaking in her own little soapy paradise. She was humming along, slightly off-key, to the latest Weird Sisters hit currently playing in the fuzzy faux-fur FlyWizard headphones that were clamped securely over her ears.

Hermione always pampered herself every week while Draco was busy with his Quidditch practice, just to make certain that she had plenty of uninterrupted privacy. Because these weekly pampering sessions now frequently included a most relaxing bout of self-gratification while she luxuriated in her secret silken soak.

The only thing different about this relaxation period today, and one that Hermione was completely unaware of, was the fact that Draco had gotten knocked off his broom by a rogue bludger twenty minutes into practice.

He had taken a hard enough of a tumble, from high enough up, that to Madam Hooch's experienced eyes it warranted a trip to see the school medi-witch.

With the infirmary wing currently filled to capacity with bearbug flu victims, an extremely harried (and currently overworked) Madam Pomfrey wasn't feeling very sympathetic at all towards Draco Malfoy. The medi-witch was well aware of that priviledged Slytherin's whining over the slightest thing for the past six years.

She given him a cursory diagnostic wand-scan, and promptly sent Malfoy on back up to his quarters with a pot of bruise cream, a simple pain relief potion, and an EverKool ice pack.

She'd told the Slytherin Head Boy that he was perfectly capable of healing his bruised head, bum, and ego on his own time, in his own space, and in that order.

All that Draco Malfoy wanted, as he grumblingly limped himself along up the many floors of that damned shifting staircase, was a nice hot shower. Maybe a bit of help applying that damned bruise cream on the one awkward tender spot on his shoulder.

He seriously doubted that he could reach it on his own, and it did truly ache.

Draco wondered if he could convince Hermione into massaging it in for him, and then he could take a nice, long, long, uninterrupted nap. Unless she'd keep him company, of course. He snorted and shook his thumping head at the impossibility of that thought.

As he hobbled into his quarters, Draco groused under his breath on the continuing inefficiency amongst most of Hogwarts' hallowed staff. It wouldn't do him a damned bit of good to complain about it to that dotty old coot Dumbledore, however, and he knew it.

All the Headmaster would be likely to give him would be a pat on the head (as if he were still a First Year) and probably a lemon drop, or maybe a licorice whip. Draco felt that his rank and position should at least have gotten him a stronger pain killer, especially since he had to do all of the healing on his own.

Draco slipped the outer cloak of his uniform off and tossed it towards his bedroom door as he hobbled on over to the bathroom. He assumed that Hermione was in the library, as she usually was when he had Quidditch practice, and hoped that she'd hurry up.

He really could use some help with treating his bruised shoulder, and his Slytherin friends were all so far away down in the dungeons.

Meanwhile, lost in her steamy, honeysuckle-scented, soapy idyll, a fantasizing Hermione began to let her hands wander across her taut dusky pink nipples, brushing them with butterfly-light touches of her fingertips.

The cool air that wafted across her dampened nipples caused them to pebble even harder, and immediately sent the most delicious of tingles swiftly downwards to electrify her very core. Hermione caught her breath in a gasp of pure pleasure.

She let out the breath in a drawn-out, languorous, moan, as her right hand dipped below the foamy surface of the bathwater. Her hand sensuously slid over the slightest feminine rounding of her abdomen, and then tenderly caressed up and down her toned inner thighs.

Hermione shuddered from the erotic sensations she felt her hand giving, before sliding it even further down. Down, down, down it crept, to begin the process of seriously relieving the yearning ache rapidly growing within the neatly groomed chestnut apex of her slender tawny thighs.

As Hermione arched her back, reeling with pleasurable sensations, her voluptuous breasts pushed their tips up through the bubbly surface of the warm bathwater. She unconsciously gave a slightly rotating roll of her belly, as she ground her pelvis ever more forcefully into the merciful ministrations of her self-taught fingers and hand.

Bright flashes of light now skittered into glorious multicoloured firework-like sparks across the dark inside of her tightly closed eyelids. Hermione felt her release approaching it's climax.

Her imaginary lover was always so attentive, and so thoroughly satisfying, that Hermione couldn't help but to softly gasp. She didn't realize that she was vocalizing aloud what was inside her head, as she screamed out the name of the only one she fantasized about now, _"Oh . . . oh YES! YESsss, just like that, Draco! Oh my Sweet Gods! Yes, yes, yesss! OOooohhh, Draaacccooo! Yyeeesssss!" _

What Hermione had also failed to notice in her moment of sweet and complete abandon was the bathroom door opening up directly in front of the tub that she currently occupied; certainly not the openmouthed expression of utter gaping shock scrawled across the dirty bruised face of one filthy, scratched, and disheveled Draco Malfoy.

The look on Draco's face had been simply priceless when he'd heard his own name being called out at just such a deeply private moment by none other than Hermione Granger!

It really was too bad that she'd missed seeing it.

To his credit, Draco did manage to quickly and silently shut the bathroom door prior to his fainting, with an unheard **'thump!', **as cold-away as Neville Longbottom had ever done.

A few minutes later an unsuspecting, but toweled-off and now tidily dressed, Hermione Granger opened the bathroom door, only to find an unconscious, and obviously wounded, Draco Malfoy lying crumpled on the cold stone floor just outside of it.

One of his still gloved hands was stretched out as if either reaching for the Golden Snitch, or for the bathroom doorhandle and her help.

"Sweet Merlin! Bloody Hell, Draco! What's happened to you?" Hermione gasped out, and immediately knelt down beside him. She jerked her wand free of her still twisted up hair.

Suddenly freed from it's bondage, Hermione's hair tumbled down. It wrapped around them both in a cascade of long thick dark-honey curls, as if the tresses were a living creature.

She hastily ran her wand over the unconscious Malfoy, performing a rudimentary, but most effective, first aid scan over his bleeding head and battered body.

Hermione had taught herself basic first aid medi-witch techniques because of all of her traipsing around with the male two-thirds of the Golden Trio, and continually coming up the one worse for wear.

It had seemed like the thing to do at the time, and had proven invaluable on more than one occasion. Hermione became quite adept at healing the simple wounds and minor bruised bones that the three of them always seemed to crop up with year after year, what with all the annual potshots that Voldemort took at Harry.

On this occasion, however, Hermione was simply glad that she had the skills that Draco Malfoy might need!

_SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS_

_Draco was naked, aroused, and perched between the lean, tawny thighs of __**his**__ Muggle-born, when he paused with his hand wrapped around his long, hard, cock. His long ivory fingers were slowly pumping its velvety shafts thick circumference. _

_"Say my name, witch!" he duskily whispered, his voice deepening down into a baritone in his arousal. She loved that his voice was now almost as deep-darkly seductive as his godfather's ever was. _

_It was a true turn-on to Draco that he could reduce this brilliant witch down to a puddle of whimpering need with his voice alone, and he simply loved to hear his little lioness purr his name out loud._

_He swirled the engorged head of his cock slowly across her swollen clit, smearing the pearly tear of his nectar across the throbbing bud of her sex. He rubbed teasingly tiny circles on her nether-lips with his twitching member in an achingly slow erotic massage. _

_Hermione gave a quiver of pure pleasure. She attempted to lift and lock her ankles around his slim waist to draw into herself what he was offering, but not surrendering, to her. "Please, Draco! I want you . . . I NEED you . . . __**inside**__ of me . . . NOW!" she finally crooned out in a husky groan. Hermione lifted and wantonly wriggled her shapely arse as she arched her pelvis upwards once more._

_Draco gave a small smirk of self-satisfaction as he pushed his hand full of cock just a bit lower, and with one swift thrust, he impaled her to his hilt. He shuddered in ecstasy as he paused for a moment to relish the snug clamp of her juicy inner walls around his throbbing cock. Draco also took pride in her swift intake of breath at the almost (but not quite) painful scrape of her sudden filling by his turgid member._

_Hermione finally purred out that sound that he now craved all of the time from his witch, "Oohhh, Yessss, Draaaccooooo!", as she wriggled around his circumference and her inner folds adjusted to fit his impressive length._

_As her reward for her obedience to his command to say his name, Draco rotated his hips once, twice, thrice, almost completely withdrawing each time from her heated core, only to stroke deeply down into her again . . . and again . . . and again!_

_"All you had to do was __**ask,**__ Granger. It's unneccessary for you to __**beg **__me, my filthy little __**Mudblood,**__ although you do it __**so**__ prettily! Gods! How I __**love**__ fucking you!" Draco sensuously growled against her ear, punctuating each emphasis with another almost withdrawl and plunge back to the absolute bottom of her hot, tight core. _

_He had perfected the timing of his deepest strokes with his dirty words, and her delighted gasps of pleasure, long ago. Together with the squeeking of slapping flesh, and their combined pleasured moaning, their dirty words made a lusty cadenza that he now performed using her as his instrument._

_Hermione always felt a deliciously erotic little frission of wickedness slide down her spine at that old racist term 'Mudblood' now, when it fell so infinitely lovingly from Draco's multi-talented lips! _

_Strange how that once hateful slur had somehow mysteriously morphed to become one of their naughtiest, most private, and most arousing 'dirty words' used during their 'pillow-talk' sessions. _

_Draco bent forwards, capturing her gasping lips with his own extremely talented mouth, and gently suckled on them until she groaned her complete surrender into his kiss. He deepened their kiss, wrapping his tongue around hers and pulling it back into his own mouth. _

_Draco wanted to allow her a taste of him, before plunging his tongue back and ravishing her sweet mouth once more in their complete abandon. _

_Hermione's every nerve ending shivered in waves of lust, as he used his lingual muscle to repeat actions inside her mouth that another of his muscles was admirably performing in another orifice much lower down on their conjoined anatomies._

_She was a slave to their combined pleasure by this point, and she passionately returned caresses and writhed and moaned and thrashed with Draco. Both were locked in the ages old rhythm of the parry and thrust of his wand of flesh stabbing her soaking core of femininity completely into ecstasy._

_Draco felt the familiar sudden clenching pulses of her slick tightness around his cock that heralded Hermione's imminent peaking. He reluctantly let go of her wonderful mouth, to pour all of his concentration into administering the hard, deep, furious stroking that his personal little lioness required to achieve her climax. _

_Hermione was now totally lost to the utter oblivion of a full-blown orgasm, and she suddenly screamed out, "OH Gods! OH Gods! OH, YEESSssssss! Oh! DRACOOooo!", as she mindlessly rode her climax's crest out on his rock-hard pistoning cock, much to his immense satisfaction and personal gratification. _

_Draco's cock had __**never**__ felt this hard before with anyone else, EVER! Sweet Merlin's Balls! If only he could fuck this witch forever, he'd gladly give up everything he owned, including his immortal soul._

_Draco knew his climax was imminent. His sweat now ran in rivulets down his face, chest, and back, and dripped in salty raindrops onto Hermione's passion flushed face and jiggling sweat-slickened breasts. _

_Draco felt his balls filling and tightening, and his hot blood pounded his heartbeat in stuccato-timing inside his eardrums. He could taste his mouth going dry, as all of his body fluids threatened to simultaneously abandon him. _

_Draco continued pounding into Hermione, meeting her thrust for thrust and helping her ride her strong orgasm out, as she keened out another cry of a second completion. He was struggling hard to hold back his own release until his Hermione had received every drop of pleasure she could bear first._

_Sweet Circe! How Draco loved plowing his pulsing rock-hard cock inside the fertile field of his beloved witch! __Thank all of the gods for Gryffindors. They were so loving, so single-minded, simply so damned SEXY in their unbridled passions and willingness to completely surrender to Love! _

_Draco increased his tempo, really jackhammering into her now with all the amplified fervour he was capable of. "I love you, Witch," he moaned into her ear without even realizing that it had slipped from his passion-truthful lips as he nuzzled her throat._

_Gods! Her sweet little pussy was so tight, so hot, and just so absolutely soaking fucking wet with the last gushes of her very own honey-sweet juices. _

_Draco was so close to cumming now, he felt that if he tried to hold back his ejaculation for even one more instant, why he'd simply . . . ,_

_SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS_

_**"Ennervate!"**_

Hermione's firmly voiced spell brought Draco out of his swoon, and wide awake from a truly fantastic wet dream!

Of course his awakening **had** been helped right along by the powerful orange jolt of healing energy that had shot from her wandtip to hit him square between his grey eyes.

For a few dazed and confused seconds, they both stared into each other's eyes: mercurical grey, disoriented, then suddenly aware; amber-brown, concerned, then suddenly embarrassed.

"Oh, shit," moaned Draco, scrunching his eyes tightly shut again, as he desperately tried to will away the excruciating erection now contorted inside his (thankfully) well padded Quidditch pants.

_'Circe!'_ What he'd been witness to only a few minutes earlier raced back to the forefront of his memory, and it certainly didn't help matters that Hermione smelled simply wonderful.

_'Like an apple orchard in full-bloom!' _Draco couldn't help but ponder, as long thick tendrils of her damp, wavy, brunette hair grazed across his face in a soft caress when she reached down to help him to stand up.

"Well if that's all the thanks I get, Malfoy, you can finish 'doctoring' yourself up all alone," Hermione indignantly huffed. She chose to express selfrighteous anger at the rush of embarrassment she'd felt when Draco's muscular arm had quite accidentally brushed across her breasts.

Why, she'd almost jerked his innocently lecherous arm out of it's socket hauling him up onto his feet!

The sudden loss of the remaining bloodflow to Draco's brain, as he was assisted so unceremoniously to his feet, blurred his vision again and the room dimmed once more around him.

Draco staggered. Hermione might have thought that he'd been faking before but after witnessing him nearly going down again for a second time she realized that Malfoy couldn't possibly be faking this now.

Hermione was instantly contrite, and willingly wrapped both of her arms around Draco's slim waist to help him cross their common room to stretch out on their sofa.

He allowed her to help him remove the heavy arm and wrist pads of his Seeker's uniform, and then his black dragon's hide gloves and boots. Draco stopped her as she was attempting to divest him of his Slytherin-green team jersey, intent on stripping him in order to treat his wounds.

"Merlin's Balls, Granger! Leave me a bit of dignity, for pity's sake. I just need to rest here for a few minutes. After that, all I want is a long hot shower, then to rub in that stupid bruise cream, take my pain potion, and go my crippled arse to bed," Draco painfully groused, as he wearily rubbed a skinned up hand across his still unfocused grey eyes.

_'What a waste of a perfectly good erection!' _That wayward thought flitted briefly through Draco's mind, as his brain took back the blood it desperately needed, and his hard-on deflated. He attempted to sit up, only to flop most ungracefully back down again upon immediately losing his equilibrium once more.

_"_NO!" Hermione forcefully ordered Draco, pushing him backwards against the sofa arm, and sinking down on her knees beside him in her effort to restrain him. "If you pass out in there on the stone walls or floor of the shower, you'll crack your thick skull the rest of the way open. You're notgetting into that shower unless you have someone to assist you. What an idiot!"

Draco cracked open one grey eye to peer at her, and hopefully asked, "Why? Are you volunteering to shower with me Granger_?"_ At her shocked expression and outraged gasp, Draco allowed himself a single slightly indecent arch of an eyebrow, one trademark Malfoy sneer, and a small wicked chuckle.

He instantly wished he hadn't bothered however, as even that small of an effort to goad her set off a fresh miniature earthquake of a headache inside his suspected cracked skull.

"Bloody hell, Granger. I was just joking. How about sending for Blaise? He should be back in the Slytherin common room by now, I think. Don't say why I need him, just for him to come up here now, understand? I have a position to maintain. Can't show any weakness," he ended in a weary, irritated-sounding, mumble.

Draco's voice gradually drifted quiet, and Hermione instantly woke up him again. "Malfoy! Draco!Wake up, and talk to me," she urged him with a nudge, and then an insistent shake of his bruised and aching shoulder when he failed to immediately respond. She seated herself crosslegged on the carpet covering the floor in front of the sofa on which he was lying.

"Yes, yes, I'm sending for Blaise and Professor Snape right now. Don't go to sleep, Malfoy! I think you might have concussed yourself, if your head hit the stone floor when you passed out earlier." Hermione quickly summoned a school house elf, and immediately sent the tiny creature to fetch both Snape and Zabini up from the Slytherin part of the castle.

Draco made the extra effort, and managed to remain awake. One could even say he'd remained reasonably alert, although a bit ascerbic, giving only the briefest of terse answers to her bloody continual questions, until his godfather and his best friend finally arrived to save him from her.

They bundled him off straightway into the bathroom. In short order, a much cleaner and much more comfortable, Draco Malfoy was soundly sleeping snug in his own bed having been tended to and treated by none other than Professor Severus Snape, the Potions Master, himself.

It had been strange for Hermione to hear her most aloof, unapproachable, and sarcastic Professor being called by his given name. It had been even more strange to witness honest emotion and concerned compassion for a student, albeit his godson, on Snape's normally sour and sauternine visage.

Draco had indeed had a small depression of his skull. Hermione "had done well by keeping him awake and alert", the Professor had said.

"Quick thinking, and an excellent diagnosis, Miss Granger," he'd complimented her, even going so far as to grant her a very small, but completely genuine, warm smile of approval much to Hermione's surreal surprise.

It was now well after midnight, and a worried Hermione Granger sat sipping on a steaming beaker of tea as she held a bedside vigil over Draco Malfoy.

Hermione pulled the multicoloured, striped shawl (her this year's Christmas present from the Weasley matriarch) more tightly about her, and adjusted her position slightly so that Crookshanks could hop up onto her lap.

She was sitting in a flowery chintz rocking chair that she'd transfigured out of a stray dirty sock she'd found lying on Draco's floor.

Crooks snuggled her warmly, and when she'd sat the empty beaker onto the floor beside her chair, she yawned widely. She opened her favorite book, Hogwarts: A History, and attempted to read a bit by wandlight in order to remain alert and watchful.

Hermione was sound asleep, still curled up in her chair with Crookshanks keeping her warm as he purred his rumbly cat-snores on her lap, when Draco awoke for the first time sometime just before dawn.

He was startled into immediate wakefulness by the Prescence of Someone else in his room. His hand slowly crept under his pillow, and in a flash of movement, his wand was a brightly glowing point of _**Lumos!**_ It was just Hermione.

_Merlin's Balls!_ If he'd still been housed down in his Dormitory in Slytherin House, he'd have hexed first and asked his questions later. As his pounding heartbeat slowly calmed its self, and that organ slid back down from where it had leapt up to lodge in his throat, Draco gazed at the sleeping witch of his dreams.

An empty, tea-stained, beaker sat on the floor to the right of her chair. At some point during the night, the book she'd brought for company must have slipped from her loosened fingers to slide down her knee, and it had come to rest on top of her left foot.

Her eyes were closed, her rosy lips slightly parted by her warm breath, and her face was as relaxedly serene as a stone Buddha's. Her chest rose and fell with the even steady rhythm of her breathing, as she slept peacefully on.

Draco was amazed, as he drank in the vision of the witch he longed to call his own. Hermione must have stayed here with him all night long. She'd sacrificed her comfort, her concern, and her time, just to make certain that he was alright.

_'Gryffindors!'_ he thought to himself for the thousandth time (or more) since the start of his Seventh Year. This time there was a true affection on Draco's part as he thought the hated word. Most amazingly of all, this time he didn't feel a single trace of those old House rivalries hissing at him when he did so, either.

Draco softly smiled to himself as he tenderly gazed at the sleeping girl guarding him, and the sleeping familiar guarding her. It was an honest, gentle, genuine smile. He burrowed back down into the warmth of his bedding, yawned, and drifted off once more into a deep, peaceful, healing sleep.

Draco Malfoy had never felt so absolutely safein his entire life!

**End Chapter Four**

_**SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS**_

_**A/A/N: Well, what'd y'all think about the lemonaide? Sorry it was only a dream, but I've got the feeling that it bodes well for their ending. Just hang on tight, only a few more twisty turns left in our journey now.**_

_**SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS**_


	5. Chapter 6

_**SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS**_

**A/N: **_**I'm still not JK, and I have the financial statements to prove it. Alan Rickman wherever you are please know that you are simply the sexiest man alive! Smooches!**__ It never hurts to dream, girls! _

_**SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS**_

**A Fine Line**

**Chapter Five: Crazy Little Thing Called Love**

_**SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS**_

_**5th of February**__**:**_

Draco Malfoy had never been so nauseatingly disgusted in his entire life. All he had wanted to do was help the daft chit! She'd missed her breakfast, then luncheon, now dinner had come and gone.

Hermione hadto be hungry by now, but _'Nnooo!' _The silly mental chit had actually thrown her pillow at him to force him from her room.

Now just listen to her! Even that minimal energy expenditure had caused a coughing fit that sounded as if her lung would surely be coming up next. The exasperated Slytherin thought that if it were physically possible that the chit's lung would certainly have already hit the floor.

With a brisk wave of his wand, an irritated Draco Malfoy cast a silencing charm on Hermione's bedroom door to eliminate the noise of her incessant hacking, sneezing, and those oh-so terribly wet_-_sounding bursts of nose blowing coming from inside.

Hermione Granger had finally succumbed to the bearbug flu that was going around, and was positively miserable!

Her hair had reverted back to the tangled bushy mass of frizz of her earlier years, before she'd finally hit upon exactly the right combination of hair-care potions to tame it.

Her retrousse little nose was an abominable shade of raw-meat red, and seemed to be set on constant drip-mode.

Her lips were so dry and cracked that it was a paper-cut kind of torture to even speak through them.

There was a dull saffron yellowishness to her skin tone, and (just to complete the look) there were those deep purple hollows sunken beneath both of her listless brown eyes. They gave her every appearance of having gone a round or two of fisticuffs with Goyle, and Hermione had most definitely lost the bout!

She'd used up her very last remaining energy reserves throwing her pillow at Draco when he'd attempted to see if she needed anything. _'How dare he just open the door and walk on in, just like he owned the place. How rude!__ Surely somewhere in the guide book on _Manners for Malfoys,_ he must have learnt to KNOCK before entering a lady's bedroom,'_ Hermione fumed angrily (but silently) to herself.

However what was really bothering Hermione was the fact that she was very well aware of just how vile she looked. She'd never bothered with using cosmetics and, other than taming her unruly hair, was just fine with the rest of her appearance as it was.

She was truly shocked at just how much it had upset her to know that Draco Malfoy, of all people, was seeing her at her absolutely worst-looking **. . . **ever!

Bloody hell! To top it all off, it had suddenly dawned on her that she was rather nibbly after all.

Hermione huffed in her miserable annoyance, blew her achingly tender nose again, and tried to levitate the pillow back from where it still lay on the floor near her door.

She sneezed midway through the 'swish' and 'flick' of her _"Wingardium Levi . . . vi . . . Ooo . . . ssSS . . . AahhCCHHOOOooo!" _and instantly exploded her pillow into a furious shower of white goose feathers and tattered bits of fabric.

"Oh, bugger! This bearbug flu sucks arse," she sniffled, coughed up another rib-wracking chunk of phlegm, and groaned in protest against the cramping pains in her aching bones. Hermione finally gave up, flopped back down, and blew her sopping nose one more time.

Meanwhile, Draco had done several quick-time laps around their commonroom, in an attempt to calm himself, to absolutely no avail. He already was not the most happy of campers when he stomped over to answer the loud, demanding, rapping on the door that opened from the corridor into their Quarters.

Bloody Fucking Hell! It was Potty and the Weasel, come to check on Hermione's condition most likely. As politely as was possible for the Slytherin Head Boy (due strictly to his and Hermione's truce agreement), Draco showed the two Gryffindors he disliked the most in the entire world into his private common room.

With a sneer on his face, but utter politeness in every word and gesture, he asked them to have a seat while he informed Hermione that she had guests

Of course having to obey Malfoy,of all people, didn't sit too well with either Harry or Ron. The pair of them were under strict wizard's oaths to Hermione to not start any unnecessary trouble with Malfoy, as long as he didn't actively instigate a situation. So down the male two-thirds of the Golden Trio both sat on the surprisingly cushy sofa and settled for simply glaring daggers at Malfoy while they awaited the verdict of whether she'd see them or not.

Meanwhile, Draco smirked back at the pair as he jauntily strolled across the room and firmly rapped on Hermione's bedroom door, just as if nothing had ever been wrong between them. He loudly called out, "Cover up, Granger. I'm coming in to check on you."

Hermione jerked her crimson comforter up to her chin, and glared at the opening door through the white tornado of feathers and bits of cloth whirling all around the room. Draco squeezed inside, quickly closing the door behind him to prevent the feathers from escaping.

Draco couldn't help it. He immediately burst out laughing at the sight that greeted his startled grey eyes.

There was Crookshanks, perched on the foot of her bed, furiously hissing and angrily swishing his bushy orange tail from side to side. His overly-furry marmalade body was arched up and frizzed out in his annoyance. His baleful yellow eyes were pointedly glaring from his squashed face at the whirling white feathers that seemed to be intent on attacking him.

There she sat, huffed up in her regal leonine aggravation. Her honey brown tangles stood all frizzed out around her face like an overly-curly lion's mane. Hermione's irritated topaz eyes were pointedly glaring at him through the swirling cloud of feathers and bits of tattered fabric that had once been her pillow. If she'd still had her tail, it would have been swishing just as madly as Crookshanks' own currently occupied appendage.

_Circe! _What a truly feline pair the witch and her familiar made!

But even as sick (and sickly looking) as Hermione was at this moment, this witch was still absolutely perfect in Draco's mind.

Draco pulled out his wand and vanished all traces of the wayward feathers. He then conjured Hermione a new pillow, with a real silk pillowcase the exact shade of her comforter. Draco carried the pillow he'd created over to her bed, and carefully tucked it behind her back.

"Here, let me help you, Granger. You've done as much, or more, for me, and a Malfoy always repays his debts," he arrogantly said, but gentle grin that accompanied it softened the statement.

He then parked his perfect arse on the edge of her bed, picked up the obviously unused hairbrush from her bedtable, and began to ease it through the mass of tangles on her head.

"Really, Malfoy! I can brush my own hair. I just haven't wanted to," Hermione lied, as she pushed herself up on one elbow, and the coughing fits wracked her once again. She made a weak one-handed attempt to take the brush back from him, but Draco held it up out of her reach, and she limply gave up the struggle as she surrendered to his ministrations.

It surprised Hermione just how gentle Draco was being with her. It was . . . what was the right word? Ah yes! It was soothing. It also felt nice, those long rhythmic strokes of the firm bristles pulling across her tender scalp and gliding through her tangled length of curls, with his other hand following behind the brush and smoothing her hair down. He was done in way too few strokes for Hermione's liking.

Draco cast a quick freshening charm, that smelled of ocean breezes and sunshine, on the stuffy room. He then winked at her before saying, "You've got company, pet. The Gruesome Twosome have come to pay their respects. Do you feel up to seeing them? If not, I'd truly be more than happy to send them packing for you."

He gave his wand a quick twirl in the air between his long, ivory fingers, as if it were simply a drummer's stick, and not the weapon it really was. Draco arched a questioning blond eyebrow at her, accompanied by a lascivious wink, with that fake-innocent look she could now always see through plastered firmly in place on his handsome face.

Hermione laughed weakly, which brought on another bout of deep coughing, but she still shook her head at him. When she'd recovered the ability to speak, Hermione rasped out, "No, but thanks anyway, Malfoy. Let them come in. They'll not be satisfied until they've seen me for themselves."

Draco bowed deeply, and then said in his best 'Jeeves-the-butler' voice, "Of course, milady. Will there be anything else, mum?"

Hermione appeared to be in deep thought for a moment as she tapped one finger imperiously on her chin. With another sniff and wipe of her sore nose, she hautily quipped back, "Why yes, Malfoy, there is. Could you possibly fetch me some warm chicken broth, dry toast, and a pot of weak tea with lemon and honey?"

Draco smiled at Hermione and he bowed once again, saying as he did so, "Milady, your wish is my command." He exited her room, and sent the Twosome in for their visit.

As soon as Harry and Ron had shut Hermione's door behind themselves, Draco called for one of the kitchen house elves and placed her supper order, adding a thick roast beef sandwich and a cold butterbeer for himself to it. He ordered the tray to be delivered up to them in fifteen minutes.

His Hermione was hungry. He'd show Potty and the Weasel out himself when her supper tray arrived. She needed to regain all of her strength, and quickly too. This had decided it once and for all in his mind.

If he could still love and desire this witch when she was this sick, then by all the gods that ever were, Draco Malfoy was going to try to woo Hermione Granger and make that rare and lovely witch his very own!

_**SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS**_

_**8th of February**__**:**_

Thanks to several doses of a rather stout FluEze Potion provided by Draco from Snape's private stores, and the standard doses of PepperUp Potion supplied by Madam Pomfrey, Hermione was finally feeling a little bit better.

She was currently occupying almost the entire length of the comfy sofa in their common room, leaving only enough space for her room-mate's lean arse to sit at the opposite end.

Her chilly socked feet were covered with an old, well-used, particularly garrish (but toasty warm) Molly Weasley handknitted throw. They were currently resting comfortably draped across Draco's lap.

His left hand was idly massaging her cold toes through their fuzzy covering, as his deep voice read aloud to her from the excellent notes he'd taken in their shared classes and she caught up on whatever she'd missed that day.

The other assorted Gryffindor and Slytherin visitors in the room were simply shocked into speechlessness by the cozy picture of domesticity that Draco and Hermione presented. The two Gryffindor friends of Hermione stared over in uneasy puzzlement at the two Slytherin friends of Draco.

And just since **when** had the two of them began calling each other by their givennames?

The respective friends present from both Houses had thought that the two of them had been simply tolerating each other's presence on the Headmaster's orders, and nothing more.

Blaise and Pansy looked askance at Draco, wondering if anyone (meaning Hermione, of course) had slipped him an illegal love potion. Neither of them dared to question Malfoy about it, though. He was too quick to hex first, when irritated, and he had a wide knowledge of some rather nasty curses and hexes.

Draco's friends simply adopted the 'wait and see' attitude. It was the Slytherin way to silently observe and then work a situation to your own advantage.

Their expressions and their thoughts were echoed, but in the opposite order, by Hermione's two present friends, Harry and Ron. Harry trusted Hermione and her judgement. After all, she was supposed to be the brightest witch of her age.

If she needed him later on to help her pick up the pieces, well, then he'd be there for her. He loved her like the sister he'd never had. Harry would most gladly and willingly duel Malfoy for Hermione's honor, if it came down to it.

Ronald Weasley, however, wasn't exactly known for either his tact or his communication skills. He leaned forward and bluntly asked Hermione, "Say, 'Mione? What's up with you and the Ferret? Did he slip you a love potion mixed in with your flu medication, or hit you with an 'Imperio' when you weren't looking?"

"Ronald Weasley!Don't call me that!" she shouted at him, only to relapse into such a wracking fit of coughing that an angry Draco Malfoy was instantly up, and on his feet.

All of his meticulous notes were suddenly scattered everywhere, and his steely-grey eyes hotly flashed his annoyance at the Weasel. His long ivory fingers simply itched for his wand, and the firing off of a ball-boil hex at the crude, obnoxious, meddling redhead. But his witch's needs came first to him.

Draco tenderly attended to Hermione, patting and gently rubbing her back, as she struggled to stop coughing and catch her breath again. He then insistently pressed a sip of icy cold butterbeer to her still dry lips from his very own mug to help soothe her raw throat.

Hermione finally managed to still her coughing, and she faintly thanked Draco for his assistance as her breathing settled down. She turned her head slightly to the left, and pinned an absolutely withering glare on the only redhead present.

"Just because Draco's a Slytherin, you automatically want to think the very worst of him," she managed to hoarsely say. "Get over it, Ronald! It's time for you to grow up and stop looking at the world like a spoiled child, where everything either goes your way or else there's bloody hell to pay. Nothing is ever just black and white. Every circumstance always has shades of grey. Draco and I agreed to both act like civilized adults, back when we first began sharing the Head's Quarters and duties this year. Why do you insist on taking everything back down to the nursery school name-calling days? Even Harry is willing to give Draco the benefit of the doubt, and to make nice for my sake. Why can't you?"

After her tirade, Hermione weakly sank back down against the upholstered sofa arm, covered in a slight sheen of clammy perspiration, completely exhausted, wheezing, and even more pale than she'd been for the past several days now.

Ron meanwhile had gone a glorious shade of burgundy red, all the way from his heels to his hair-roots, with embarrassment at Hermione's public dressing down.

He immediately did the only thing possible to do when a girl was that angry at a guy.

Ron apologized profusely to Hermione, and then aloud he totally agreed with her.

It didn't mean that he really thought she was right, because he didn't. It also didn't mean that he wasn't still extremely suspicious of Malfoy, because he was.

Ron simply couldn't suddenly trust the oily Slytherin stud-muffin. Somehow he just knew that something devious was afoot with the Ferret, and that it most likely involved a convoluted attempt at getting into 'Mione's knickers.

Perhaps he had picked up a bit of precognitive knowledge in Trelawney's stupid classes after all.

But Ronald Weasley absolutely knew when to shut the hell up!

His mum and his little sister had trained him too well for him to continue arguing with a very determined person of the female gender. Irate witches were such vindictive bitches! After all, one had to save one's bits from being hexed off by any and all means possible.

He'd need them for the very pleasurable purpose of carrying on the Weasley family line one day.

However, Ronald Weasley fully intended to keep a very close, very watchful, and ever vigilant eye peeled on the Ferret.

Hopefully without Hermione noticing it, of course, and hexing the **shit** right out of him!

**End of Chapter Five**

_**SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS**_

_**A/A/N: The next two chapters will explain it ALL. I solemnly swear (that I'm up to no good)! WHAT? Don't you**_** trust **_**me? **__her right eyebrow arches sharply upward, very Snape-ishly, as she sly snickers "mwahhaha"_

_**SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS**_


	6. Chapter 7

_**SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS**_

_**A/N: **_**By the way, **_**I'm still NOT and I still DON'T. JKR owns Everything (except for my little baby's plot) but I'd so very gladly trade it to her in exchange for just 24 hours alone with her cheque-book. **__mmwwahhaha! she wickedly snickers, and hopes . . . _

_**SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS**_

**A Fine Line**

**Chapter Six: I Get By With A Little Help From My Friends**

_**SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS**_

_**11th of February**__**:**_

Hermione was finally completely recovered from her experience with bearbug flu, and was looking fit and fine again.

She was happily back in all of her classes, and wasn't behind in the slightest. Draco kept such excellent notes, and he had patiently went over them each night with her while she convalesced.

He'd also taken it upon himself to turn in her essays and homework assignments for her while she'd been sick.

It was simply wonderful to study with a partner who had just as deep a passion for learning and researching as she had herself.

Not that she didn't love Harry and Ron, of course, but honestly! It was like pulling ogre's teeth to get either of those two enthused about much of anything beyond Quidditch.

Draco loved Quidditch just as much as they both did, but he still studied extremely hard, and he actually read just for pleasure!That was something that Hermione couldn't envision Ronald Weasley ever doing, not even in her wildest dreams.

It was nice to be back down in the Great Hall, sitting at the table with all of her fellow Gryffindors once again. Still, a tiny part of Hermione was just a bit sad that she and Draco weren't dining together in the privacy of their quarters, as they'd done while the bearbug flu had laid her low.

He'd always had something amusing or worthwhile to discuss with her, and she really missed his snarky intelligent conversation over her meal.

All around her now, her housemates were rather rudely grabbing at the food from the many dishes present, gabbling on about the latest 'who's screwing whom' rumors (from the females present), and about how badly the Gryffindor team was going to thrash the Hufflepuff team at Friday's Quidditch match (from the males, of course).

Hermione finished her dinner as neatly and quickly as was politely possible, then excused herself to the table in general, and to Harry and Ron in particular, claiming the need to go study for her Advanced Transfiguration test tomorrow.

She never even noticed the silver-grey eyes that had been surrepticiously watching her every movement from over at the Slytherin table, or Draco's quietly rising and leaving that table at the same moment she left out of the Great Hall.

At the Slytherin table, Pansy leaned over towards Blaise and whispered so softly that her boyfriend had to strain to hear, "I think that a certain Gryffindor is about to get quite a bit of Slytherin in her."

Blaise wolfishly grinned, and whispered back, "Maybe, maybe not. Can you seriously picture them together? You know how the Malfoys are about Blood."

Pansy smartly answered the swarthy boy back, "Blood doesn't matter if all you're after is a fuck!" Blaise thought about this for a few silent minutes of agreement. He couldn't give away the secret that Draco had only last night confided in him as his best friend. He'd taken a wizard's oath to Malfoy not to reveal it to a soul.

But still, what would happen if he could get her to guess? That wouldn't break the oath, or at least Blaise hoped not. Pansy Parkinson was probably the only one that could help Malfoy now, if only she would. He tilted his dark head down toward Pansy, and quietly whispered, "But what if it's not just a fuck that he wants? What if there's more to it than we think?"

Pansy snorted, and promptly choked on her pumpkin juice!

After she'd spelled herself clean, and thought about it for a few minutes, the pretty dark haired girl finally whispered back, "Well, and what if there is? He's still Draco Malfoy. I, for one, want to keep in his good graces. We all know that he's going to go places, no matter which side finally wins. Even if he takes up with a Mudblood, he still has all the money, prestige, and power that comes along with the Malfoy name. I'll stand by Draco and even try to make friends with the stuck-up little Gryffindor bitch, if she'll let me!" Blaise nodded his curly dark head, for once in total agreement with his girlfriend.

"What if we maybe'helped' our mutual friend out?" Blaise quietly asked her. "How could a Slytherin could woo a Gryffindor, and still come out on top?"

Pansy rested her chin on her propped-up palm, as her huge sapphire eyes fixed and locked in her fierce concentration. Blaise held perfectly still. He'd only seen Pansy 'zone out' like this a handful of times before.

The Parkinson's held Eildarvitch-blood in their family lines. They were only one of an ever decreasing and diminishing breed of Purebloods left in this world that did. Pansy didn't tap into it very often, though. She didn't want to become as dotty as Loony Lovegood, the only other Eildarvitch-heritaged child to attend Hogwarts in well over twenty-five years, and her cousin. Their family connection was something that Pansy Parkinson never wanted anyone else to know, **ever. **

Blaise's breath caught in his throat as he stared, transfixed, when the whole of her sapphire eyes turned that strangly glowing Eildarvitch-blue_._ _'Merlin! She's so beautiful like this! The eyes of a Goddess made human!'_ he thought in awed wonder.

Then the flash was gone, so instantaneously that one could very easily say that it'd never even happened. Pansy smiled brightly at her swarthily handsome boyfriend and excitedly said, "I've gotit, Blaise! Just leave everything to me, but you mustn't get jealous when I have to play up to Goldstein. Okay?"

"What's making up to that buggering crow Goldstein got to do with," Blaise roared, but Pansy quickly cast a silencing charm on her boyfriend before he was able to complete his sentence and let the proverbial kneazle out of the sack.

"SSsssshhhh!" Pansy frowningly hissed at him, then quietly added, "I'll tell you later," pointedly rolling her large sapphire eyes over to where Crabbe, Goyle, and Nott sat, now suddenly hanging onto their every word.

Blaise slowly closed his dark eyes and took a deep calming breath. His bitch of a witch was **so** going to pay for this! He counted to ten, swallowed, and nodded. Pansy released the silencing charm, and he quickly stood up and hauled her unceremoniously to her own feet, snarling as he did so, "Let's go,witch!"

Pansy instantly simpered into her fake 'easy-lay mode'; curling and rubbing her petite frame suggestively up against Blaise, before arching a wicked little smirk at the three Death Eater-wannabe's sitting across from them.

She then smartly turned an about-face on her heels, and sashayed her little heart-shaped arse right out of the Great Hall.

A right jealous and darkly fierce Blaise Zabini stalked out after her, hot on her tapping little heels. With just a bit more billow, he'd have performed a perfect impersonation of his maleovent Head of House.

Nott, the only real brain amongst the three of them slowly began to snigger, then loudly guffaw, as he enacted a crude 'grab and hump' motion for the benefit of the two true imbeciles sitting on either side of him.

The sickle finally dropped for the two idiots, and soon all three of the obnoxious bullies were loudly snorting, horseplaying, and howling with crude laughter as they repeatedly made ever more crude, sexually-explict, gestures at one another.

The trio seemed truly surprised when a scowling Professor Snape suddenly pushed up from his usual seat at the staff's table, stalked down from the dais, and strode over to where they were sitting at the Slytherin table.

He stopped directly behind them, and gave each of the three jackasses a sharp, consecutive, **Thwack!** across the backs of their thick skulls with the flattened palm of his left hand.

"I am appalled to be forced to call you three imbeciles Slytherins!" Snape furiously hissed at them from between his tightly clenched teeth, jet-black eyes blazing, as he ominously towered above them. The black scowl of barely restrained fury carved across the Professor's pale features was truly awesome to behold!

Severus Snape was a Death Eater, really, after all was said and done. Every Slytherin knew that. All around that section of the table, their fellow Slytherins began to submissively scoot away from the drama unfurling there, and to hastily flee the immediate vicinity. They left Crabbe, Goyle, and Nott to face their most deserved fate all alone.

In his most ascerbic tone, normally reserved only for Gryffindors, Professor Snape sharply bit each word out, "You three must truly be complete disappointments to your respective fathers. Five points each from Slytherin House, and a week's detention with Filch. Each! And Gentlemen," his sneer and tone turning the very word into an insult, before he quietly dropped his voice an octave lower, growling in a darkly dangerous even deeper baritone, "you may rest assured that _**I**_ will be personally writing to each of your families concerning your ignorant display of bad manners in front of nearly the entire body of Hogwarts, students and staff included, immediately."

Their irate Head of House sniffed disdainfully at the three nearly-adult males now submissively cowering and cringing before him. It smelled as if Crabbe might have pissed himself, which satisfied Severus to no end. He straightened up to his full six-foot two-inch leanly muscled height, jerked his high collar up, and long black woolen sleeves back down into their proper place.

Professor Snape then whipped around, a thunderously black scowl firmly in place, and strode off in his trademark maleovent swirl of billowing black robes.

There were many housepoints taken, for the barest of infractions, from the few students that were too thick to avoid the seething Snape as he stormed back down to his dungeon office. Hehad to go make good on his promised punishments, and notifications, in time to make the evening owl post.

Now, just how best to explain to three of the Dark Lord's most trusted, and most deadly, Death Eaters that their sons were complete imbeciles without getting himself the minimum of several rounds of _'Crucio', _if not actually being _'Avada'_dby the motherfuckers?

Shit, shit, most fucking definitely deep, deep shit!

Professor Snape locked his office door, and thrice-warded it. He then _'Accio'_d his hidden bottle of Old Ogden's Finest.

Severus unbuttoned the top two buttons of his stiff white shirt, and ran a finger around the high collar at his throat to loosen it a bit. He unstoppered the smoking crystal decanter and drank down a long pull straight from the bottle; not bothering searching for a glass or even wincing at it's fiery bite.

Severus set the thick rock-crystal decanter down on his desk with a firm 'clink' and pushed it to the far corner of his desk. He dejectedly sat, wearily rubbing his long ivory ink-stained fingers across his burning onyx eyes, as he slumped back into his black leather desk chair for a few minutes respite.

Finally Professor Snape sighed deeply, and straightened up. Opening his desk drawer, he withdrew several pieces of parchment, taking his time to lovingly smooth their rich surface over with his firm hand.

The Potions Master pulled out his quill, slid his private inkstand closer to him, and began to compose his first letter.

_Gods!_ Severus hated teaching!

**End of Chapter Six**

_**SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS**_

_**A/A/N: There is only one more chappie to go, luvs. It's just a tad longer than this one, the grand finale. I hope you're enjoying the journey of Hermione and Draco, and that the next chapter will finally reveal the method behind all of my madness! **__snickers! __**(:D) **__mmwwaahahaha!_

_**SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS**_


	7. Chapter 8

_**SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS**_

**A/N: By the way, I'm still definitely **_**not**_** JKR, and I make no money whatsoever from my efforts at "tickity-ticking" out these little absurdities. **

**JK's the one who owns everything you might recognize, and she so graciously and freely allows us to "play" with them. Anything you don't recognize, I'll gladly take the blame for. **_snickers_

_**SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS**_

**A Fine Line**

**Chapter Seven: All You Need Is Love**

_**SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS**_

_**12th of February**__**:**_

It was time for their free period after Advanced Charms, and Pansy Parkinson pulled Anthony Goldstein to one side as everyone was filing out of Flitwick's classroom. "Did you get them?" she quietly questioned him. Goldstein furtively glanced around, then took Pansy's arm, and began quickly walking the two of them up towards the Astronomy Tower.

When they were completely alone, with a commanding view of the Hogwarts' grounds, he finally relaxed and smiled down at the pretty sapphire eyed Slytherin. "Of course I've got them!" he triumphantly told her, his tone implying that she shouldn't even have doubted his capabilities.

Goldstein reached inside his robe and pulled out a miniaturized packet of the little Valentine treats, **Sweetie Hearts.** She stared at the tiny packet suspiciously for a moment, then cocked an inky eyebrow and asked, "Do they have the exact same charm as the ones you had last year?" He cocked an irritated eyebrow at her, and annoyedly huffed, "Does hippogriff dung stink?"

Pansy laughed, and clapped her hands in her glee. She pulled her coin bag from it's secreted place inside of her robe, and her galleon was quickly exchanged for the oh-so innocently appearing treats. The transfer of goods and funds was so neatly and quickly accomplished that no one could possibly have witnessed it.

Pansy even gave the tall, dark, and handsome Ravenclaw the brief snog she'd promised him as his tip. She'd deny it even under Veritaserum, of course, if anyone ever questioned her about it!

If Goldstein ever breathed a wordabout this, and if Blaise everfound out -- OOooohhh! Pansy shivered at the very thought of what the passionate swarthy wizard would do to the both of them. She left the tower top, and quickly scampered down the winding stone staircase to go create herself an alibi.

Pansy Parkinson was a Slytherin to her very core, even if some people did think that that was a bad thing these days. She still firmly believed in that old Slytherin code: C. Y. O. A. Cover your own arse. Self-preservation must always come first!

_SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS_

Professor MacGonagall held the Head Boy and Girl behind the other students exiting her classroom after their Advanced Transfigurations examination was completed. As usual, they'd been the very first two of her students to finish her test. Each had then quietly pulled out another textbook to quietly study from, until the rest of the class had completed and turned in their parchments also.

Professor MacGonagal had already graded both of their essay exams, and felt such a sense of pride at their both doing _so_ well that she even managed to summon up a warm smile for the young Slytherin as she said, "I am so _very_ pleased and proud of you both! Both of you have scored an "E" on your examination. Exceeds Expectations! Congratulations, Miss Granger! Congratulations, Mr. Malfoy!"

Draco swallowed hard, and ducked his rapidly reddening head in an oblique bow of acknowledged respect to the old Gryffindor Dragon, as he gruffly responded, "Thank you, Ma'am." He took back his scored parchment from her extended hand (it could almost have qualified as a 'snatch'), and then hurriedly left her classroom.

"Don't mind him, Professor. He's just more comfortable being praised by his fellow Slytherins. It makes him worry that we want something out of him, or are about to hex him, when Gryffindors are nice to him," Hermione took it upon herself to over-explain in her nervousness, as always, when she accepted her own scored parchment from Professor MacGonagall's outstretched hand.

Professor MacGonagall peered knowingly at Hermione over the rim of her half-moon spectacles, and spoke only a single word as she eloquently lifted one eyebrow at her favorite charge, "Indeed?"

"Quite!" Hermione softly replied with a blush climbing quickly upward from her very toes, and not even daring to meet her Head of House's knowing willow green eyes.

Hermione Granger fled the classroom even more rapidly than Draco Malfoy had!

_SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS_

Hermione and Draco had decided to celebrate their perfect scores with a private dinner together in their commonroom. They united in performing a combination silencing spell and double-wardings against intrusion by their well-meaning, but overly nosey, friends.

They were most effective in firmly securing the outer door of their quarters, much to Pansy's intense annoyance. She'd finally decided to help Malfoy's quest for the Mudblood right along. Now just how the hell was she supposed to get her weapon to him?

The Head Boy and Girl sat facing each other across the low wooden sofa table, cross-legged on fat floor pillows that Hermione had conjured up. Both were rather hungry; dipping immediately into the variety of dishes provided, and savoring each bite of their specially ordered meal.

They both were also hungry for having the other alone in front of the cozy fire crackling in their hearth, as well as the savoring of the pleasurable company and conversation of each other.

The two of them were continually surprised within themselves at how comfortable, just how in tune, and how right they both felt in the other's prescence.

How unfortunate for them both that they were from such rival Houses; that there was so much pain between them, both physical and mental.

There was also the very real fact of their both coming from such completely different backgrounds. Yet they had so very much in common, much more so than either of them fully realized yet.

Both feared just what the other's reaction would be on the discovery of their attraction to them.

Both furtively searched the other almost constantly for some sign, or unconcious flicker of something, from the other. But of course both of them were completely blind to all of the obvious giveaways that their friends had seen coming from them for simply ages now.

So both talked only on the most neutral of subjects over their dinner; their opinions of their current studies, then moving on to the newest, most highly improbable rumors going around, and even beginning a discussion on the volume of Donne's poetry that they were currently reading aloud to each other from before bedtime.

Neither could screw their courage up to the sticking point and make an overature to the other because of fear. Both feared the other's disgusted rejection.

Neither could bear losing the tentative friendship that they'd developed over the course of this year. Better to have the other's friendship than an awkward situation leave them both with nothing at all.

Unexpectedly, they heard the soft 'rat-tat-a-tat' of an owl pecking at the ancient, lead-paned, common room window. Draco quizzically arched a blond eyebrow at Hermione.

She shook her honey brown curls, a look of pure puzzelment apparent in her toffee eyes. She hadn't a clue who'd be owling them at this hour. (But she wanted him to get up to go and see.)

Draco took another bite of his roasted chicken and slowly chewed it, savoring the flavor of meat and rosemary. He had absolutely no intention of answering an owl, and interrupting his meal. It could wait until he was done.

Hermione huffed in her annoyance, swirled up onto her feet as gracefully as a ballerina, and rushed over to open the window to let the poor thing in from the bitterly cold night air.

It was a golden pygmy owl, a very rare and very expensive bird. Strange indeed.

For such a tiny thing, the owl still displayed quite a bit of fierce hauteur as it's head did a double-swivel from where it had disdainfully perched on the back of their sofa.

It gave every impression of intelligently taking the whole of the room in with it's wide cinnamon-coloured eyes. It then managed to magnificently convey the distinct idea that it's present surroundings had been examined, and had come up severly wanting.

Draco's twisted sense of humor was aroused by the little owl's antics. Grinning, he broke off a bit of his roasted chicken to offer as a treat for the superior little bird.

He stood up, and extended his hand for the shrunken package it still clutched in one tiny claw.

The little owl winked at Draco. Hermione was absolutely positive that she'd seen the damned thing wink at Draco!

It obediently dropped it's tiny cargo into the Slytherin's hand and Draco flipped the bit of meat into the air.

The owl immediately took off after it and neatly caught it's treat on the wing, swallowing it down before circling the room with a 'oo-whoo-hoo', signalling for Hermione to re-open the window.

She did so and out it flew back into the frozen night air disappearing just as mysteriously as it had appeared.

Draco set the shrunken package on a cleared corner of the table, and took a seat on the sofa. Hermione closed and locked the window and drew the thick velvet draperies back across it before crossing the room to take a seat on the opposite end of the sofa from him.

"Well?" Hermione impatiently querried, her combination feminine and Gryffindor curiosity now fully aroused. "What is it, Draco? Who's it from?"

Draco shrugged his broad, well-defined shoulders, causing his body hugging, pale blue, cashmere jumper to silkily ripple against his lean musculature. "I don't know, Hermione. Would you like me to enlarge it and see what it is?" he answered her question with one of his own.

Hermione caught her full bottom lip between her teeth, worrying it in the flush of nervousness she felt as she covertly admired Draco's physique. _'Sweet Merlin! He's like a living, breathing Grecian statue! Just grab me and snog me senseless, Draco, delivery be DAMNED!' _Hermione desperately thought, as she felt the beginnings of dampness in the crotch of her pink knickers.

_'What did he just ask me? Oh yes, something about what that owl delivered.' _"Sure, if you think it's safe," was what came out of her mouth, but certainly not what was truly on her mind!

With a flourish, Draco drew his wand and 'Engorgio'd the package. They both stared at what it was for a long moment, then simultaneously turned to stare roundly at each other.

They both broke out laughing at exactly the same moment, and Hermione reached for the attached note. It was simply a packet of Valentine's Sweetie Hearts, and the note was addressed **For the Head Boy and Girl.** Most likely they were holiday treats from Dumbledore. His penchant for sweets was infamous!

Hermione opened the envelope, pulled out the note from it, and quickly scanned the contents.

Draco had reached out to open and pull one of the treats from the packet, but Hermione stopped him with a touch of her hand on his extended arm.

"Wait, Draco!" she exclaimed, and began to read the note aloud, "Dare you play the game? These are 'Sweetie True-Hearts', designed to be read aloud to another. The imbedded truth charm in these Hearts will ensure that only their heart's truth will be the other's answer. Please feel free to test them. Please feel free to play the game of 'True-Hearts', and let your heart speak for you."

Hermione turned the parchment over and examined it most carefully, then she said, "It's not signed. There doesn't appear to be any embedded hexes, just regular parchment and ink."

Draco sighed a bored-sounding sigh, and lazily tipped his platinum blond head back to stare up at the plastered ceiling for several long minutes. "Well, how about it Hermione? Areyou willing to play the game?" he quipped, finally turning to gaze at her, his normally grey irises slightly tinged with blue streaks.

Hermione's breath caught painfully in her chest, her heart hammering painfully, as the moment instantly crystallized for her in her sudden epiphany.

She'd finally correctly read in those mesmerizing, colour-shifting, marvelous eyes of his just how much hope lurked there for her answer to be in the affirmative.

She swallowed hard, and then slowly nodded her head, the movement loosening several more tendrils of her honey brown curls from it's french-braid to stray across her face. _'A little shelter is better than no where to hide,'_ she thought, but aloud she said, "You first please, Draco."

Draco shook the packet of Sweetie Hearts well, and drew out his first piece. His face blanched a bit, but he still softly read aloud the words inscribed on the tiny heart, _**"Will You Be My Valentine?" **_He laid the little heart down on the table in front of him, and could not for the life of him meet Hermione's amber eyes.

Hermione shook the packet hard for herself, and pulled her first little heart out. She froze as she read the single word to herself before she spoke it aloud,_** "Why?"**_ She slowly set it down beside Draco's first question.

Draco's hand trembled slightly, but he still reached out and shook the little packet furiously before he made his next draw.

Hermione was stunned as she watched the normally self-possessed Slytherin's ears turn a dark maroon with embarrassment, as he read the next message silently to himself.

She really thought that he was about to forfeit the game to her, but then he brokenly whispered, _**"Because I Love You",**_ and very carefully placed the little sweet onto the table below his first one.

He left his trembling hand resting beside the tiny, too-true, message and his gaze suddenly seemed to find the pattern on the carpeting beneath his feet extremely intriguing.

Hermione took up the little packet, and shook it for all she was worth, before she made her draw. Then she softly smiled, and read aloud what she'd wanted to say anyway, _**"I Love You Too".**_

She bent forward, and placed her reply delicately beside Draco's second little heart. Her hand hesitantly drifted across the short distance between them to lightly caress, then cover, Draco's nervous hand.

Draco suddenly raised open, vulnerable, blue-flecked, quicksilver eyes to meet her own glowing amber eyes, and swallowed down a lump in his throat the size of one of Hagrid's pumpkins.

He huskily whispered, for once in his lying life being completely open and honest with another person, "Hermione, I love you. Those three words hold my life in them."

Hermione gently smiled at him, her eyes now openly shining with her love, and she replied with an honesty ringing so true that he could never doubt it, "Draco, there is only onehappiness in life. To love, and to be loved."

His hand convulsed and involuntarily flipped over to tightly entwine his long fingers within her's. They both sat staring at their joined hands for a long, silent, moment.

Afterwards, neither one could ever truly remember who had reached out to embrace whom first, or exactly at what point their murmured endearments, and quiet confessions of secret love and longing, had turned into those electrified kisses and touches.

It didn't matter to either of them anyway. All that mattered was the honest love that had finally ignited the sparks of passion that had always flared between them.

They necked and petted and kissed for what seemed like hours: heating and teasing each other, then shakily pulling away to catch their breath; or to have a cooling swallow of butterbeer, and to feed one another another bite of chocolate for strength.

They'd begin to have a conversation, and go about righting their rumpled clothing, only to have their now open desire for the other spark up once more and blaze back into another inferno of very passionate, and very physical, kissing!

At midnight, Draco finally stood up, righted his clothing (as he attempted to covertly adjust his raging erection), and helped Hermione up onto her feet. He respectfully escorted her to her bedroom door, and bowed his most courtly bow over her hand.

Draco breathed the softest kiss imaginable across his witch's hand. Those capable, slender, little knuckles that had once broken his nose so many years ago now held his heart and soul in their strong but tender grasp.

After all, that was the moment that this loyal and fiesty little witch had first planted the kernels of reluctant admiration in his arrogant heart. They had grown against his will over these past six years like the most persistant of vines. It had now finally fruited into true love.

"Goodnight, my pet. Pleasant dreams!" Draco quietly said. With that, he turned and walked the short distance to his own bedroom and opened his door.

When he was just about to enter his room, Hermione softly called out, "Goodnight, Draco, my love."

Draco turned his pale blond head to meet her shining amber eyes with his own glittering grey ones, and he smiled at her.

Just smiled.

That smile flipped her heart over!

Draco wasn't playing a game with her. She could see all the way down to his very soul in those now honest quicksilver eyes. He'd meant every single word he'd said to her.

He loved her!

Hermione returned his smile with a blinding one of her own, and stepped into her bedroom alone, closing her door behind her with a soft, but firm, 'Click!'

_SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS_

_**14th of February--Valentine's Day**__**:**_

Head Boy Malfoy and Head Girl Granger had set all of the gossip lines of Hogwarts ablaze with their attendance as each other's date for this year's Valentine's Ball. But everyone present had to admit that the two of them made an absolutely striking pair, as they waltzed around the transfigured Great Hall in time to the music being played.

Dumbledore had decided to make it a Fancy-Dress Ball, much to the delight of the majority of Hogwarts, students and faculty included.

The main exceptions being Professor Snape and Argus Filch, but both of that pair were normally highly misanthropic in most of their attitudes any way.

Draco came as Eros, a very fit and masculine God of Sex and Love. He was superbly flaunting both the brief white silk toga that barely covered him, and the laced to the knee golden leather sandles that hugged his well-formed calves. It simultaneously both obscured and revealed his toned, firm, muscular, male body.

He truly seemed to be an ancient marble statue magically brought to life.

Hermione came as Eros' soulmate, the Goddess Psyche. The long, sheer, draping of her white silk Grecian gown flowing over, but at the same time clinging to, the generous swell of her full breasts and her svelte young curves.

Her thick dark-honey coloured curls were perfect for the intricately knotted Grecian style it was caught up in. It was held up by a glowing charmed fillet of golden ribbon, and gave every impression of being a halo of light around her naturally beautiful face.

Her warm amber eyes glowed with an understanding well beyond her eighteen years. Pure love somehow magically shone out from the very pores of her skinlike a beacon!

Hermione Granger was truly gorgeous beyond compare, and in every sense of the word a true Goddess to Draco Malfoy's happily shining silver-bright eyes.

All four Houses looked on in amazed awe, as the Head Boy and Head Girl twirled about the dancefloor together in perfect timing and symmetry.

It was just like something straight out of a Muggle fairytale. Just like in Beauty and the Beast, living in such close constant contact with the goodness of Hermione Granger seemed to have truly matured and redeemed Draco Malfoy.

To all of the onlookers present, it seemed like an instant love. Not even their closest friends would ever be able to fullyunderstand just what **a fine line** between love and hate that that most unlikely of pairs had danced for years.

And that was just the beginning of their Happily-Ever-After!

_**SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS**_

_**Eighteen Years Later**__(she wickedly snickers and winks!) __**(:D):**_

For years afterwards, whenever any of the students that were present on that night spoke about the last Valentine's Ball they'd attended at Hogwarts just before the Great Final Battle, they always spoke in awed whispers.

They had been there on that night. On that most magical of all nights!

That was the night that the Slytherin Pureblood Prince had finally gotten his very own jumped-up little Mudblood Gryffindor Queen (from the Slytherin's POV, of course).

But even in the Wizarding World, there aren't many stories like the love story of Draco and Hermione.

Their story became the next generation's new fairytale.

As a matter of fact, a child's illustrated storybook loosely based on their real-life love story was published anonymously the first year after the Great Battle entitled _**The Lioness and The Dragon**__**. **_

A separate rumor swiftly began to circulate that it's author was none other than the witch who'd lived it, but she constantly and consistently denied it. However Luna Lovegood's account at Gringott's quietly but regularly increased with the royalty checques from her publisher, with no-one ever becoming the wiser.

First were the usual unfounded rumors. Next came the usual wild speculations.

That's always what you must expect when a relationship breaks bounderies.

But when Draco and Hermione continued to be happy, secure, and content within their love together, then their story finally became 'faction' (that strange mixture of fact and fiction so well-blended together that it becomes a truth in it's own right).

There soon arose a massive movement amongst the new generation of students currently attending Hogwarts to look outside of one's own House and Blood-heritage for True Love.

It was every young witch's dream to redeem and fall in love with her very own perfect mate, just like Hermione Granger had done.

It became every young wizard's dream to strive to be worthy of the pure love and faithfulness of his very own perfect witch, just like Draco Malfoy had done.

By their shining example, they had made it all not only acceptable, but _**chic!**_ as well, with the widowed Narcissa Black Malfoy's generous help, and her completely unwavering love and total support for both her son and his chosen mate.

And very best of all, even all these many years after the Great Battle (and the finally final and complete death of Voldemort!), a completely happy, and absolutely still very much in love, Draco and Hermione Malfoy always exchanged **Sweetie Hearts** every Valentine's Day for the rest of their long loving lives together, and continued to both live very, very, _**Very**_ _**Happily-Ever-After!**_

_**The End!**_

_**SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS**_

_**A/A/N: **_**Yawn! Tired now, so at the **_**beep,**_** please leave us a message and we'll get back to you ASAP. **_**Beep**__**! your reviews go here**__ snickers_

**Much Love, Many Huggles! **_**signed, **__**theshadoelady**_

_**(Thank you JKR, wherever you are, for allowing we poor unworthies to have such free-rein with your world. It is quite true, after all, that Imitation is the most sincere form of Flattery. If your world hadn't rang so true to our imaginations, none of us would be writing a word. From the bottom of my poor American heart, Thank You!)**_

_**SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS**_


	8. Chapter 9

_**sssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss**_

**Epilogue: **_**or;**_**The Rejection Letter**

Well dear readers, I seem to have hit a snag; there's some kind of encrypted security in the damned form letter that will not allow me to "copy" and "paste" it's contents.

What to do? What to do? _she scratches her head as she ponders, then hits upon a truly old-school idea; write it down word-for-word by hand and transcribe it verbatim myself._

It will really work out better this way anyway. I can defend myself in the places this "lady" I use the term in the loosest sense of the word actually made errors in what I'd filled in on their submission site.

The following is the rejection letter verbatim:

Thank you for submitting your story to ?. However at this time your story did not meet our guidelines. (Insert broken rules, etc.)

Submission Violations:

Your warning needs to be a warning, not an A/N.

The format for the flashback would fit better with the story if it was written as dialogue and not as a script.

Category: This story should be in Malfoy Manor and not Life After Hogwarts.

Grammer and Usage errors:

Run on sentences

Misuse of commas

Word Choice/Idioms: "on your dish" should be "on your plate"

Syntax: "as his marks were up there also" might be better as "he also had high marks"

"All a-board" does not need a capital B

Characterizations:

Although we appreciate an author's license to change the character of Hermione Granger, we can only accept this if she doesn't appear too far out of the boundaries. Unfortunately your take on Hermione leaves her somewat unrecognizable as her original character and that does not fit in with our submission guidelines.

While we respect Draco's change in personality due to his circumstances, he also appears somewhat unrecognizable.

Thank you for your submission to our archive. We feel once changes have been made to the general flow and grammer your story will be accepted to ?.

**Well now, bitch. It's MY turn:**

**(1) **It's my first time using ?'s extremely complicated submission form. I fucked up and put my warning in the wrong slot. sorry.

**(2) **I watched that scene 8 back-to-back times from POA to make **certain** I was accurately "lifting" the scene word-for-word and action-for-action; it was **supposed **to read like a script. Using "film canon" there; _**duh!**_

**(3) Catagory:** No bitch, I didn't file it in Life After Hogwarts--I filed it in Hogwart's Years; but to be perfectly persnickity accurate, since it was a Challenge acceptance it **should** have been filed in the Challenges catagory.

**(4) Grammer and Usage errors:**

Run on sentences **I'll give you that one; I'm the run-on sentence queen.**

Misuse of commas **ditto; love me some commas **_snickers_

Word choice/idioms **It's what I deserve for trying "brit-speak"**

**(5) **Syntax: **Sorry to give you up girlfriend; but isn't that what a **

**Beta is supposed to help me fix? did she miss it?**

**Does not need a capital B. Cut me some slack!**

**Characterizations:**

Now here is what made me actually **cry** when I read it. I tried to handle Hermione's character as true to form as I could, or **thought** that I did, considering that my story happens in an **Alternate Universe!**

I've read stories at this site where HG is giving SS fellatio underneath his classroom desk **while **still a student and he's teaching a class when it's happening.

I've read stories at this site where HG is being sodomized by Lucius and **loving** it.(she actually screams "harder, fuck me harder Lucius"--and this is **anal** sex we're talking about here!)

Now just **where **in Hermione Granger canon is **THAT** respectfully keeping within her original character bounderies? **Can you please explain ****that one**** to just another dumb Yank?**

Well no shit, Draco is out-of-character; that was one of the blanks I filled in in your stupid submission form. **OOC!** And just in case you missed it; **Alternate Universe, Bitch!** see, sometimes you **do** capitalize the B

**And thank y'all, but no thank y'all. I no longer have any desire to submit "Jack!" at your precious site. signed, **_**theshadoelady**_

**ssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss**


End file.
